Bitcoin (BTC) has lost its recent momentum, slipping below the $30,000 mark in the wake of a strong U.S. dollar and mixed Q1 earnings results.
The largest cryptocurrency by market cap was recently trading at around $29,500, off 2.6% in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin began to decline on Sunday and dropped to as low as $29,292 before recovering slightly, according to CoinDesk data.
“Even though it breached $30,000, the value was probably looking for support on the downside and potentially consolidating before another jump up,” said DiPasquale, noting that with Bitcoin staying around the mid-$29,000 range, most hourly indicators such as the RSI and Stochastic RSI point to an increase in price.
“What the bulls need to see is a strong bounce from either the $28,000 or $29,000 range and a reclaim of $30,000 in the coming days,” he said, adding that the price may dip to $23,000 before going back up. “In this case, it might take longer for the upside to materialize,” he added.
Data from Coinglass shows that traders who bet on price fluctuations have liquidated over $32 million worth of BTC long positions since Sunday evening, as opposed to $1 million of BTC short positions. This type of long squeeze has a tendency to push prices down.
Kaiko research analyst Riyad Carey said several macroeconomic factors, such as the U.S. dollar’s recent resurgence and a selection of mixed Q1 earnings, could have caused Bitcoin’s value to dip. The U.S. Dollar Index and Bitcoin’s price have a negative correlation, according to Carey, though this has weakened since the start of the year.
Ether (ETH) was hovering around $2,084 Monday, dropping 0.7% in the past 24 hours, but still relatively stable after Ethereum’s major software upgrade last week. AVAX, the token of Avalanche, has recently jumped 7% to $20.70, while DYDX, the token of the perpetuals-focused decentralized exchange dYdX, rose 5% to over $3.
The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), which measures the overall crypto market performance, decreased 2% in the past 24 hours.
After seeing gains late last week, crypto-related stocks took a dive on Monday. Shares of Coinbase (COIN) and Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) both dropped over 3%, and MicroStrategy (MSTR), which holds a large amount of Bitcoin, fell 5%.
Equity markets have been mixed as traders await Q1 earnings reports from some of the major banks, including Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS). The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq were both down 0.1% and 0.2% respectively, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average remained flat.