Bitcoin remained lifeless for most of the day as the index remained entrenched in a tight trading zone between $42k-$44k. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is looking to recover from a multi-month low of around $39.6k but is now stuck in this narrow trading range for the last few days. Altcoins on the other hand were also steady for most of the day except for a few outliers. More on that later on. 

In other news, a young Indonesian man has made a whopping $1 million in trading Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). He made these NFT sales by clicking selfies with his smartphone for the last five years. More on that later on.

Speaking of NFTs, nowadays it is being widely speculated where the NFT market is going to go from here onwards. While the current trends are running their course right now, it is widely expected that they will give way for new ones in the near future. Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated art is expected to become one of the next in line to be tokenized and sell as NFTs. The concept is quite old but was recently promoted by Dan Brown’s new book Origin in which an AI makes its own art pieces and is in every way smarter than human beings. 

The acting US Comptroller of currency has stated that the immediate need of crypto intermediaries to collaborate and coordinate with each other and federal agencies. Michael J. Hsu, the current temporary incharge of the currency regulator recently spoke at the international event called TransAtlantic Finance Forum and spoke in length on the topic “the future of Crypto Assets and Regulation”. 

Bitcoin is Steady above $43k

Bitcoin had an uneventful day overall as the index refused to go below $42.5k and move to $44k throughout the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency survived a move below $43k just before press time but that was too shallow on its own.

The last 24 hours started with the cryptocurrency at around $43.3k and it didn’t fluctuate much for the rest of the day. Early in the day, the index rose to as high as $44.7k before midnight. However, that proved to be the highest valuation the digital currency would have during this time. The price immediately came down to $43k and traded sideways around it for the most of the rest of the day. Just a few hours before press time at 2:30 PM, the index posted a low of around $42.6k in a dip but recovered quickly back above $43k. At press time, it is trading at around $43.4k. 

Moving onwards, Bitcoin is currently looking to consolidate itself just above $40k before making the next move. The index has remained within a tight space for the last few days and is expected to carry on in the near future until either the bulls or the bears can make a definitive move. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $821 billion and its share of the proceedings was 39.5%.

Altcoins Remain Steady

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins remained largely steady during the last 24 hours apart from a few exceptions. Cardano (ADA, 9%), Uniswap (UNI, 6%) and Cosmos (ATOM, 7.25%) were the three big performers. Dogecoin (DOGE, -5%) posted a noticeable loss. But, the rest of the market was very steady and didn’t post any real change during this time. 

In Other News….. 

Indonesian Guy Raises $1 Million from NFT Sales

A 22-year old Indonesian man has raised a massive $1 million from his NFT sales on OpenSea. Interestingly, the NFT collection was made up of 1,000 selfies which Ghulam Gustaf Ali took during the last few years. It was kind of a throwback to his entire graduation from university. He also mentioned what was happening around the time time when he took each particular picture which added a sense of uniqueness to it. Like this one:

Ali didn’t know he was getting into this kind of money. Initially he had placed a price of around $3 for each selfie and didn’t expect much activity from the buyers. However, like a viral meme, the NFT caught on and crypto users on Twitter really promoted it. Now, the NFT has sold for a whopping $1 million. 

The NFT sector in general has really taken off in 2021 and is continuing on this year as well. Despite the crypto market in a sizable dip at the moment, the the NFT market is continuing on with its amazing progress. 

Bitcoin is currently hovering above $42.5k at press time. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is having a bit of a recovery session as it looks to post a reactive recovery after going below $40k after a gap of several months. Altcoins on the other hand also posted some recoveries, many of them outdoing BTC again. More on that later on.

In other news, the largest NFT trading platform OpenSea is all set for a record month despite the recent slowdown in the crypto world. There are many prevailing reasons why NFTs are refusing to back down despite a major slump in most markets around the world. More on that later on. 

The North African country of Morocco is becoming the regional hub in crypto adoption. This is interesting to witness as the monarchy has officially banned the use of the digital currencies and there are considerable offences involved. Despite all this, the country is in the top 50 in the world when it comes to crypto holding population percentage according to estimates from Triple A. 

The US Congress is once again nearing a new set of crypto regulations across the country. Mike Crapo, the senator from Idaho, criticized the recent lack of progress from the US Federal Reserve Bank (aka The Fed) and its chairman Jerome Powell. The latter promised a detailed report and that is likely to come out in a few weeks.

The Iranian government is close to allowing crypto payments for international trade. The embattled and heavily embargoed country is under talks with the US and other key governments around the world to lift crippling sanctions. However, it is at the same time looking at other options to accept payments provided the talks reach a dead end. 

A recent JP Morgan survey shows that investors on Wall Street don’t believe Bitcoin can rise to $100k in the near future. The overwhelming majority of the wall streeters believe that the digital currency won’t go as high as $100k in the near future while only 5% believe that it will. 

Twitter’s ex CEO and founder Jack Dorsey is looking to invest in the crypto mining sector, recent job opportunity advertisements show. The billionaire founder of the microblogging platform has always maintained a direct interest in the crypto sector and reportedly owns a considerable amount of crypto. Now, through his company Block (formerly Square), he plans to develop the best ASICs for Bitcoin mining which is a big development. 

Major podcaster and commentator Joe Rogan has high hopes for Bitcoin and the crypto sector in general. According to his latest podcast, the digital currency scene will either fall apart on its own or give humanity a better way to live. 

Bitcoin Recovers Above $42k

Bitcoin has recovered somewhat from its recent dip below $40k and is now around 7% up from that recent low level. At press time, the digital currency has risen to around $43k and it may try to consolidate these gains by moving further upwards.

The last 24 hours started with Bitcoin at around $41.3k. It immediately rose to around $42k and spent most of the day hovering around that level. However, just around press time, the digital currency rose strongly and is now knocking at the gates of $43k.

Going forward, while the recovery earlier today was welcoming, it is still quite weak overall. The cryptocurrency just fell to around 4 month lows and even then the price gain was weak. Overall, the bulls need to continue further to get to around $46k at least. Otherwise this recovery will be all for nothing and the bears can make a comeback quite easily.

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $812 billion and its share of the proceedings were 40.5%.

Altcoins Post Recoveries

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins posted recoveries of their own, many outperforming BTC in the process. Major gainers included Binance Coin (BNB, 10%), Cardano (ADA, 6.5%), Terra (LUNA, 8.5%), Polkadot (DOT, 10%), Polygon (MATIC, 13%), and Near Protocol (NEAR, 10%) which entered the top 20 cryptos for the first time.

In Other News…..

NFTs Continue to Break Records Describe Bearish Crypto Market

The NFT sector is posting considerable numbers and is showing no signs of slowing down. The largest market for these digital collectibles is called OpenSea and that is on course to post the highest monthly volume ever. More than $6 billion worth of these digital tokens are expected to be traded on the platform.

This is another indication that the NFT sector is growing independently of the larger digital currency sector. This is because while the NFT scene does rely on blockchains and such, it is essentially a very different sector overall and one that is posting very contrasting numbers. So, expect the NFT market to decouple more and more from the cryptocurrency market in the near future. 

After briefly breaking the support line at $40,000, Bitcoin has rebounded and quickly rallied upwards by a few thousand dollars. But although the altcoin market reacted positively, most of the alternative cryptocurrencies have only made modest gains. However, some less known altcoins managed to appreciate greatly. Without further introduction, let’s take a look at some of the most interesting altcoin news from the past week!

Solana Is Having Troubles - Will the Metaverse Save SOL?

The last quarter of 2021 was not very good for Solana (SOL). The ambitious project encountered many bumps in the road, mostly caused by technological difficulties which led to downtimes and outages. Even though Solana managed to stay in the top 5 of largest cryptocurrencies on the market, the investors’ sentiment towards SOL became much less enthusiastic.

However, there’s a chance that Solana’s problems might finally be over, as one of the new projects on the SOL blockchain has just announced a massive partnership with Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

The project called Portals is a metaverse built on the Solana network that allows individuals and businesses to own rooms in the virtual world. Although the project has not gained larger recognition yet, Binance’s decision to build a virtual office in the Solana metaverse might give a lot of momentum not only to Portals, but to the SOL ecosystem as a whole.

So far, businesses and brands migrating to the metaverse were choosing ETH-based platforms like Decentraland (MANA) or The Sandbox (SAND). Will Binance’s surprising decision to choose Solana as their go-to metaverse destination be enough to change this trend?

Disney Joins the Metaverse Race

Following in the steps of companies such as Meta (previously Facebook), IBM, Nvidia and Microsoft, yet another multi-billion dollar enterprise has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon. Disney, the largest media company in the world, has announced that their patent for a groundbreaking metaverse technology has just been accepted by the US regulators.

So far, most projects claiming to be metaverses are still simple online games which don’t even feature Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) solutions. Disney’s metaverse will be different - the innovative technology will enable displaying 3D assets directly on real life objects like walls.

It’s still unclear whether Disney’s metaverse will feature blockchain-based assets such as Non-Fungible Tokens, or will Disney decide to launch their own altcoin, but one thing is certain: the possibility of displaying your NFTs in real life one day has just become much more likely!

Harmony and Oasis Network Become the Best Performing Major Altcoins of the Week

The most famous altcoins made very moderate gains this week, and some haven’t even managed to make up for their recent losses. However, two less-known alternative cryptocurrencies have made impressive gains over the last 7 days.

Out of the top 100 largest coins in the market, Oasis Network (ROSE) has done the best. Oasis Network is a DeFi-oriented decentralized protocol aiming to increase the privacy and scalability of data stored on the blockchain. The ROSE price has increased by over 32%, which made Oasis Network the 68th biggest project in the blockchain ecosystem.

Another altcoin that made superb gains this week was Harmony (ONE), a blockchain platform aimed at dApps developers and allowing building fast and efficient smart contracts with cross-chain interoperability. Over the past 7 weeks, the ONE price has increased by almost 29%.

The SHIB Price Increases Slightly, as the Shiba Inu Supply Becomes More and More Centralized

The Shiba Inu (SHIB) price has increased by over 5% in the last 7 days, covering a small fraction of the massive losses that SHIB holders have suffered since October. But in the case of Shiba Inu, on-chain data can tell us more than the price activity itself.

Over the past week, two significant things have happened to Shiba Inu. Most importantly, the SHIB whale activity increased tremendously, with a few addresses rapidly accumulating billions of SHIB tokens. In other words, the cryptocurrency known for the fact that most of the supply is owned by less than 10 wallets is becoming more and more centralized.

On the other hand, the number of SHIB transactions keeps diminishing. The number of daily SHIB transactions have fallen down to under 200, which shows that the retail interest in the meme cryptocurrency might be waning.

Is the massive accumulation of SHIB by a few whales over the past couple weeks a sign that we might witness one more huge Shiba Inu pump before the tokens are dumped? It’s likely that we’ll find out really soon!

Bitcoin is currently engaged in some serious tussle between the bulls and the bears. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization suffered another considerable price loss earlier in the day. Despite the recovery afterwards to $41.5k till press time, the bearish clouds still hang over the digital currency’s fate. Altcoins on the other hand posted even deeper losses over the weekend as they followed BTC into the abyss. More on that later on.

In other news, popular Dutch trader and analyst Michael Van de Poppe predicts that the Bitcoin price index can fall further. He posted that the investors believe that there is some potential left in this bearish move and therefore they want to swoop in when prices drop even further. He believes that fear is accelerating the further drop of the digital currency. More on that later on.

Billionaire investor Bill Miller is betting big on Bitcoin. The seasoned financial player has announced that he has invested more than 50% of his net worth into the digital currency at the moment. He previously considered himself as a Bitcoin observer, but now after considering the incredible potential of the sector, he is now a full-fledged Bitcoin bull and has allocated half of his net worth into Bitcoin.

A Spanish parliament member believes that the chaotic situation in Kazakhstan means that the government can try and lure some of the crypto miners to the Iberian country. Kazakhstan is seeing more than a week of violence in which hundreds of protestors and government officials have been killed. As a result of this street violence, internet and power services have been sabotaged in the country and with it, the big mining industry within it. 

According to a recent Bloomberg research, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is the richest individual in the crypto scene and is also going strong within the larger high net worth list. The young Hong Kong techie and crypto pioneer is now worth a massive $98 billion according to this research and growing. Binance remains one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world but is now facing increasing regulatory backlash. 

The police in Kosovo, a tiny Balkan country, are rounding up cryptocurrency mining equipment. The move comes after the energy-starved nation is facing outages among reports of excessive crypto mining going on under the radar. 

Bitcoin Falls Below $40k Momentarily

Bitcoin had a slow weekend overall but on Monday, things started to heat up again. The cryptocurrency fell below $40k before making a quick recovery. However, the bears may be happy with this move even though the move downwards couldn’t complete itself.

The last 24 hours started with Bitcoin at around $42.5k. It trended slightly downwards but stabilized around the $42k valuation around midnight. After that, the digital currency remained lifeless for around 12 hours. At 11:50 AM in the afternoon, Bitcoin began to register a price drop once again. It first moved to $41k and then $40k. Finally, in a swift move, the cryptocurrency revisited level below $40k before recovering quickly out of it. At press time, it is trading at $41.5k.

Moving forward, Bitcoin is currently facing a long-term price squeeze from the bears. This is very different from earlier price drops as the index has dropped value consistently and has continued dropping during this time. Technically, the cryptocurrency has no floor at the moment that is well established and it could go further down. However, a move below $40k could be devastating for the bulls and it will be hard for them to recover if the digital currency makes a decisive move above or below it. 

The total market capitalization of Bitcoin was around $780 billion at press time and its share of the proceedings were 41%.

Altcoins Post Losses

Other cryptocurrencies aka altcoins posted even bigger losses than Bitcoin’s. Ethereum (ETH, -5%), Solana (SOL, -8%), Cardano (ADA, -6.5%), Terra (LUNA, -6.5%), Polkadot (DOT, -7%), Avalanche (AVAX, -8.5%), Dogecoin (DOGE, -7%), Shiba Inu (SHIBA, -8.5%), Polygon (MATIC, -5.5%) and Uniswap (UNI, -7.5%) all posted big losses.  

In Other News….

Michael Van de Poppe Believes Bitcoin Can Fall Further Before Recovering Later On

Major Dutch crypto analyst Michael Van de Poppe has painted a dark picture of the Bitcoin price index in the near future. The main crux of his point of view is that since the market is working its way down consistently, many investors believe it could fall further and thus, that could mean they are still waiting for the dip to buy. 

This is why he believes that the digital currency can continue to post losses in the short-term. In the long-term however, de Poppe believes that Bitcoin can still make another comeback before the crypto winter actually announces itself.