Bitcoin below US$26,000 with a new low of US$20,000 in the cards
Bitcoin fell in Asia on Wednesday morning, trading below $26,000. Ether also fell close to the $1,600 support level, while all other top 10 non-stable cryptocurrencies traded flat or even lower. Solana’s SOL led the losers. The Forkast 500 NFT index fell while a former manager of NFT marketplace OpenSea was jailed for insider trading. US stock futures edged higher after Wall Street closed on a mixed Tuesday. S&P Global Ratings joined rating agency Moody’s in downgrading several US banks.
New Bitcoin Support Level at $25,000?
According to CoinMarketCap data, bitcoin fell 0.71% over the past 24 hours to $25,946.61 (as of 7:20 a.m. Hong Kong) and is down 11.05% this week. The world’s leading cryptocurrency traded around $26,000 this week after falling almost 10% last Friday. However, it hit a 24-hour low of $25,520.73 early Wednesday morning.
After last week’s crash, some crypto analysts are forecasting further losses. Social media commentator Ali Martinez detailed the token’s new key support level $25,400. Keith Alan, co-founder of analytics company Material Indicators, put the reading on the low side $25,000. Both Martinez and Alan said that the loss of the key support level could propel the token to a fresh low in the $20,000 area.
“The dip in bitcoin prices below the $25,000 support level could be viewed as a bearish indicator from a technical perspective as it could signal a broader uptrend reversal,” Wade Guenther, a partner at U.S. asset management firm Wilshire Phoenix, said in an E -Mail comment.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s technical indicators, including the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), are suggesting that the token’s price may be oversold.
“The 50-day moving average (MA) has started to diverge sharply towards the 200-day MA. In general, if the 50-day MA breaks below the 200-day MA, it could be considered a bearish signal,” Günther added.
At the regulatory level, investors are awaiting the much-anticipated ruling in the lawsuit between Grayscale Investments and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Grayscale has applied to the regulator for permission to convert its bitcoin trust (GBTC) product into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). However, the decision was delayed twice last week.
This delay came on top of the delays of other bitcoin applications. On Aug. 11, the SEC delayed its decision on the ETF filing filed by Cathie Woods Ark Invest.
Elsewhere, decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Balancer reported on Tuesday that it had discovered a vulnerability affecting several of its liquidity pools.
The company said it had implemented “emergency mitigation procedures” to protect users’ assets. An update early Wednesday showed that 1.4% of the total value locked (TVL) on balancers was still at risk. According to DefiLlama, that would be $9.19 million.
Ether, like Bitcoin, recorded losses. It fell 2.20% to $1,631.18, down 10.75% over the past seven days.
Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies have been trading lower over the past 24 hours. Among the exceptions was Tron’s TRX, which was up 0.20%. Solana’s SOL token led the losers, falling 3.35% to $20.54 or 13.78% for the week.
Binance’s BNB token also saw losses. It fell to a 14-month low of $204.40 early Wednesday night after a Wall Street Journal report said the world’s top crypto exchange helped Russian companies transfer funds abroad after Russia in Ukraine had invaded – a violation of international sanctions. The company denied the claim, saying it was adhering to global sanctions rules against Russia.
The report could prove damaging amid Binance’s growing regulatory challenges. The SEC sued the company in June for alleged securities violations.
The total crypto market cap approached the psychologically significant $1 trillion mark, down 1.46% to $1.04 trillion in the past 24 hours. Trading volume increased 8.88% to $31.95 billion.
