Bitcoin dipped in Monday afternoon trading in Asia but remained above the US$30,000 support level. All other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies fell in the last 24 hours, with Tron and Solana leading declines as expectations of further interest rate hikes in the U.S. weighed on investors’ risk appetite. Solana is the only token to post weekly gains.
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Tron, Solana lead losses
Bitcoin dipped 0.51% to US$30,113 in 24 hours to 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly losses to 1.83%, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization traded in the lower US$30,000 range over the weekend.
“Currently, Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 49.33 [and its] growing dominance rate can be attributed to the rise of TradFi institutions in crypto, a bullish sentiment around BlackRock’s ETF application, and the halving next year,” Rajagopal Menon, Vice President of WazirX, India’s largest crypto exchange by volume, told Forkast in an emailed response.
“Bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index for the last month was 52, which indicates that there was no unusual rise or fall in token buy or sell. However, should it fail to sustain US$31,000 for some time, we might see a decrease in its value to US$27,000 due to a potential increase in ‘sell’,” Menon added.
Several traditional finance (TradFi) companies, including BlackRock, filed Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications in the U.S. last month. But a JP Morgan report on Friday pointed out that their approval may not be as transformational as some Bitcoin advocates expect.
Bitcoin ETF applications by asset managers, including WisdomTree, Invesco and Bitwise, have boosted the token’s prices by about 26% to as high as US$31,460 over the past month from as low as US$24,797, according to CoinMarketCap data.
“If history is any guide, then Bitcoin prices could climb by 123% over 12 months, and by 310% over 18 months – based on the average return of the signals triggered in 2015, 2019 and 2020,” Markus Thielen, head of research and strategy at digital asset service platform Matrixport, said in an emailed statement on Friday.
“This would lift prices to US$65,539 in 12 months and US$125,731 over 18 months,” Thielen added.
Increased Bitcoin miner profitability is one of several factors that could push Bitcoin prices to around US$100,000 by end-2024, according to a Standard Chartered research report on Monday.
“The rationale here is that, as well as maintaining the Bitcoin ledger, miners play a key role in determining the net supply of newly mined BTC [Bitcoin]. Increased miner profitability means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” the report said.
Ether, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, dipped 0.58% to US$1,856, while losing 5.67% on the week.
All other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies also posted losses in the past 24 hours, with Tron and Solana leading declines by losing more than 3%.
Tron lost 3.86% to US$0.07698 after losing 0.17% over the last seven days. Solana declined 3.78% to US$20.73 but posted a weekly gain of 6.68%. Solana is also the only token to post weekly gains in the past 24 hours.
“If Bitcoin’s dominance rate falls below 49, we might see a rise in altcoin prices. Altcoin market is relatively more volatile since it’s easy to purchase because of low token value,” Menon of WazirX said.
“However, the upcoming ‘Altseason’ can also be a result of new investors willing to expand their portfolio beyond Bitcoin. In that case, it might not be correlated to Bitcoin’s dominance,” Menon added.
The total crypto market capitalization dropped 0.61% to US$1.17 trillion, while market volume rose 15.5% to US$22.82 billion in the past 24 hours.
Ether, Bitcoin NFT sales volume drop
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index dropped 0.62% to 2,742.26 in 24 hours to 6.45 p.m. in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly losses to 0.94%.
In the same period, the Forkast ETH NFT Composite lost 0.92% to 2,742.26, dropping 0.69% in the past seven days.
“The Forkast 500 NFT Index reflects declining sales prices across collections on all chains, but it’s Ethereum that’s really dragging the market down with it,” Yehudah Petscher, NFT strategist at Forkast Labs, the parent company of Forkast.News, said last week.
NFT trading volume on Ethereum dropped 47% to US$14.74 million in 24 hours, while that on the Bitcoin network dropped 22.66% to US$4.53 million, according to CryptoSlam data.
Uncategorized Ordinals – CryptoSlam’s category of Bitcoin Ordinals that are not part of one established collection – recorded the highest sales volume in the past 24 hours, rising 6.4% to US$2.42 million.
“Personally, I think traders are mostly tapped out of funds, and that we have much lower to fall,” Petscher said. “Traders are openly discussing having no liquidity and no plans to take advantage of historically low prices across blockchains.”
Asian equities, U.S. futures mixed; European bourses gain
Asian equity markets were mixed on Monday, after China announced its year-on-year consumer prices in June remained unexpectedly flat, the lowest level since February 2021. Producer prices in the world’s second-biggest economy for June fell 5.4% from a year earlier, the sharpest decline since December 2015. The indicators have intensified concerns of deflation risks and overall health of the Chinese economy.
The Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and the Shenzhen Component increased while Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined.
U.S. stock futures were mixed as of 7.45 p.m. in Hong Kong on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures strengthened while the S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures weakened.
“Stock markets are braced for a bout of heightened volatility as the second-quarter earnings season kicks off this week…markets are bracing for what could be the worst reporting season since the end of the pandemic,” Nigel Green, chief executive of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said in an emailed statement on Monday.
The U.S. is expected to release its latest consumer price index on Wednesday and producer price index on Thursday. The indicators will reflect the current inflation situation in the world’s biggest economy and the direction of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. Analysts expect the annual inflation rate to drop to 3.1% in June, down from 4% in the previous month, according to a report by Bloomberg.
European bourses strengthened on Monday, with both the benchmark STOXX 600 and Germany’s DAX 40 picking up during afternoon trading hours in Europe.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has consistently raised interest rates over the past year and is likely to increase rates again this month to tackle persisting inflationary pressures.
“While underlying price pressures remain strong, most indicators have started to show some signs of softening,” ECB Vice-President Luis de Guindos reportedly said on Friday in London. “While still wide by historical standards, the range of measures of underlying inflation recently began to narrow.”
(Updates with NFT, equities sections)