Total crypto market cap erased $187 billion from its value for the period since Monday and now stands at $1,616 billion. The top ten coins are all in red for the last 24 hours with most of them registering double-digit losses. At the time of writing bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $51,368 on the Bitstamp daily chart, ether (ETH) is down at $1,573.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin continued to be unstable, hovering around the $57,500 horizontal S/R line during the intraday trading on Sunday, March 21. It briefly touched the 21-day EMA at $55,400 then moved up to $57,300 in the evening part of the session, but still closed in the red. This resulted in an accumulated loss of 2.7 percent for the seven-day period.
On Monday, the biggest cryptocurrency fell further to $54,000 in its biggest single-day loss since February 23. It moved below the mentioned short-term exponential average and erased 5.7 percent of its value.
The Tuesday session was not that volatile in terms of a trading range and the BTC/USD pair was moving in the zone between $55,800 and $53,000 before closing with a short green candle to $54,286 in an obvious effort to consolidate and avoid further decline.
On Wednesday, March 24, however, it nosedived to $51,600 but managed to compensate for some of the losses later in the day eventually closing at the support zone near $52,200. It is worth noting that in the first part of the trading day, bitcoin made a breakout attempt by hitting the weekly open at $57,500. The rapid surge in its price was caused by the news that Elon Musk’s Tesla started accepting BTC as a payment method for their products. Not only that, but the founder of the company himself confirmed that all bitcoins received will not be sold but accumulated instead. The rally was short-lived and all buy orders were quickly absorbed by bears.
What we are seeing midday on Thursday is a short-term recovery to the area above $52,500.
ETH/USD
The ETH/USD pair dropped down to $1,747 on Sunday, March 21 in a short-lived pullback during the Asia session then went back up to its preferred zone around $1,790. The coin, however, was spending too much time in the weekly resistance range between $1,890 and $1,780 without being able to surpass it, which was putting it at a risk of trend reversal given the fact the relative strength index exhaustion. It ended the seven-day period with a 3.5 percent loss
On Monday, the price of ether finally broke below the horizontal support and the triangle pattern and corrected its price down to $1,683 – a level last visited on March 7. Additionally, it lost all major short-term EMAs on the daily timeframe at once.
The upcoming options expiry on Friday, March 26 was the most probable reason for the sudden market selloff with a total of $1.15 billion of put and call options expected to expire by the end of the workweek. This, according to the majority of the veteran traders might cause a general lack of consistency in the price behavior.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the coin continued to register new lows in its 4th and 5th consecutive days in red. It hit $1,516 on March 24 and as of the time of writing is trading at $1,583, struggling to close a 4-hour candle above $1,600.
Like BTCMANAGER? Send us a tip!
Our Bitcoin Address: 3AbQrAyRsdM5NX5BQh8qWYePEpGjCYLCy4
