Following another all-time high and a wildly volatile day, bitcoin has retraced slightly and calmed around the $40,000 price mark. Most large-cap alternative coins have also lost some steam, but some lower- and mid-cap ones have skyrocketed in the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin Stalls Beneath $40K
The past several days have been quite bullish for the cryptocurrency. After it dipped briefly beneath $28,000 on Monday, bitcoin went on a roll. It reclaimed the $30,000 tag almost immediately and continued upwards to new records.
The latest one came just yesterday. BTC took down another milestone – $40,000 – and kept marching on to $42,000. This became the asset’s newest all-time high. This increase meant that bitcoin has added over $14,000 in just five days – since the Monday dip.
However, the bears took charge at this point and drove BTC down to about $38,800 (on Bitstamp). Nevertheless, the primary cryptocurrency has recovered some losses and currently trades around $40,300.
The technical indicators suggest that the most significant support lines that BTC could rely on in case of another retracement are at $38,000, $37,150, and $36,000.
Alternatively, bitcoin has to overcome the resistance level at $42,000 to resume its bull run and head towards the next obstacles at $43,445 and $45,000.
It’s interesting to note, however, that the two weekends before this one were particularly wild and Bitcoin created serious CME gaps that later got filled amid massive volatility.
Large-Cap Altcoins Relax, Lower-Cap Explode
The past several days have been highly volatile for the altcoins as well, with substantial double-digit price movements. After the latest gains, though, most larger-cap alternative coins have calmed on a 24-hour scale.
Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Chainlink are essentially positioned at the same levels as yesterday. ETH trades around $1,200, BCH is at $430, XRP at $0.32, and Link at $15.56.
Binance Coin (-2%) and Polkadot (-3%) have lost the most from the top ten, while Litecoin has gained 3% to $168.
However, while larger-cap altcoins have remained still, the situation with lower- and mid-cap ones is significantly different.
IOST leads the double-digit price increase club with a 75% surge. Avalanche (45%), Solana (38%), BitTorrent (30%), Yearn.Finance (27%), Band Protocol (26%), IOTA (24%), Hedera Hashgraph (22%), SushiSwap (22%), and NEAR Protocol (16%) are some of the other representatives.
Although the total market cap has decreased slightly from yesterday’s high at $1.1 trillion, it still hovers above the coveted $1 trillion level.
