The crypto is stuck in a narrow consolidation range

Market Overview

Crypto market capitalisation has fallen back to $2.3 trillion, remaining at Thursday’s low. The upward momentum gained at the beginning of the week has not developed further, with traders preferring to sell as prices rise.

Over the past three weeks, the market has mainly traded within the $2.20–2.40 trillion range. Local resistance roughly coincides with a 23.6% recovery from the decline between the mid-January highs and the early February lows. Such narrow consolidation is often seen in strong bear markets.

Bitcoin has fallen back below $67,000, failing to build on its gains as it comes under pressure alongside tech giants on Wall Street. While the first cryptocurrency remains well above the lows it rebounded from on Tuesday, it is slowly sliding down and has given up almost half of that rebound.

News Background

The value of USDT stablecoin reserves held by exchanges has fallen from $60 billion to $51.1 billion over the past two months. CryptoQuant warns that a drop below $50 billion will trigger a massive sell-off in the crypto market.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has suggested that the price of the first cryptocurrency will collapse to $10,000 by the middle of the century. In his opinion, Bitcoin has completely failed as a store of value.

Strategy shares topped the list of large US companies by short position volume. The market doubts the reliability of the company’s Bitcoin strategy, under which the firm issued shares and attracted debt financing to purchase cryptocurrency.

Ethereum developers have presented a plan for seven hard forks between now and 2029. Updates are expected every six months. So far, only two of these have been named: ‘Glamsterdam’ and ‘Hegota’. These will be implemented this year.

Large Ethereum holders have started selling the cryptocurrency at a loss. The DAT company ETHZilla has officially abandoned its ETH accumulation strategy and changed its name. The firm has decided to focus on tokenised assets (RWA).

The DAT company GD Culture Group (GDC) is set to sell some of its Bitcoin reserves to fund a share buyback programme.  Last September, the firm acquired 7,500 BTC, placing it 15th among public companies in terms of Bitcoin reserves.

The total volume of loans on the DeFi platform Aave has exceeded $1 trillion. This makes it the first project in the decentralised finance industry to reach this significant milestone.

The FxPro Analyst Team