Bitcoin fell again earlier today as the index was forced to defend the $60k support level. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had a bumper day before yesterday as it recorded a new all time high of around $67k. However, now it seems like the index is now retesting earlier support levels just to be sure. Altcoins on the other hand gave a steady performance overall with some posting small losses while still others hanging on to their prices. More on that later on.
In other news, Paypal has just recorded its highest Bitcoin transaction volume since May earlier this year. The premier payment platform in the world enabled a Bitcoin ownership and buying feature last year and has become a popular option. However, the overall use of the feature fluctuates a lot, often rising with the bullish moves and lowering with bearish ones. More on that later on.
Walmart, one of the largest megastore chains in the United States has announced that it has installed over 200 Bitcoin ATMs in Walmart stores around the country. The company aims to keep on installing more such digital currency cashout machines and the set target is 8,000 which is a pretty big number considering the total number of Bitcoin ATMs in the US is around 48,000 and was less than 10,000 just a year or so ago. This shows the lightning speed of the crypto adoption in the country and the companies are realizing a demand for it.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has accused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of being biased to his XRP crypto project and so much so that Ethereum tipped it to cement its place as the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. While there is some truth to the matter, XRP was never in contention with Ethereum for most of the time. The closest it came was back in December 2019 when a monster rise propelled XRP across Ethereum to #2 on the charts. However, it didn’t stay long there as it shed a lot of value in a massive price dump that some analysts believe was maneuvered. It hasn’t been able to challenge Ethereum ever since even before the SEC legislation popped up.
Deputy Treasury Secretary of the US Wally Ademayo has stated that the vast number of online crypto transactions are legal and not against the law as well. However, he did acknowledge that despite that, the government is looking to add further sanctions on the sector to weed out the bad guy.
Bitcoin Retraces back to $60k
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $60.7k at press time. The cryptocurrency dropped to as low as $60k just a few hours before press time and recovered back to around $61k soon enough but the recovery is slow and the bulls are being overworked especially on the lower side of the spectrum.
The last 24 hours started with Bitcoin at around $62.7k. It traded largely sideways for much of the day except for a few hours in between when it rose to $63.8k at one point. However, at around 4 PM in the evening, the index began to fall once again just like yesterday, but deeper. First, it came down to $61k and then further to $60k. However, it didn’t go down further and the bulls were able to push the index back to $61k where it is currently wandering around at press time.
Going forward, Bitcoin is currently fresh off of a new all-time high so a retracement is entirely within the realm. Infact, this retesting of early support levels was predicted by our analysis yesterday's analysis. However, if things go below $60k, there will be some issues for the bulls for sure. However, a complete trend shift back to the bears will not occur till $50k so there is some room for the two to fight it out.
The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $1.15 trillion and its share of the proceedings was 45.35%.
Altcoins Remain Steady
Interestingly, altcoins didn’t follow Bitcoin into a price drop. Rather, most of the altcoins remained steady while a few posted some gains instead. Many of these are catching up to the premier cryptocurrency as they have been lacklustre during the last month or so, registering very little price increases along the way. Solana (SOL, 6%), Terra (LUNA, 11%), Avalanche (AVAX, 9%) and Algorand (ALGO, 6%) were the top gainers of today as other cryptos largely remained stagnant.
In Other News….
Paypal Nearing All Time High Bitcoin Transactions
The world’s largest online payment company Paypal is processing near record levels of Bitcoin transactions right now. Over $145.6 million worth of BTC was processed by it the day before yesterday when the index recorded its new all time high of $67k.
However, there is some concern for the bulls as the last time the transactions hit so high back in May, the cryptocurrency fell hard. While various other indicators were also flashing red back then and it may not occur this time around, the similarity is there.
