First Mover Asia: Bitcoin in $65K Range as Trading Volume Slows
Some analysts see the coming Taproot upgrade spurring an additional bitcoin price increase following this week’s surge.
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Good morning, Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Market moves: Bitcoin recovered from Wednesday’s dip to near $64K as trading slowed from earlier in the week.
Technician’s take: Upside momentum is starting to slow, especially given recent overbought signals on the charts.
Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis.
Prices
Bitcoin (BTC): $65,140
Ether (ETH): $4,741
Market moves
Bitcoin spent most of Thursday ranging around $65,000 during U.S. trading hours as the markets slowly digested a highly volatile trading day on Wednesday, when bitcoin dropped to near $64,000. At the time of publication, bitcoin was up slightly over the past 24 hours. Ether was above $4,700, a nearly 3% gain.
Bitcoin’s spot trading volume across centralized exchanges tracked by CoinDesk was much lower on Thursday compared with Wednesday, as bitcoin slowly recovered to above $65,000.
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Markets have remained bullish, despite the centralized exchanges that offer bitcoin futures liquidating roughly $133 million in long positions when bitcoin started dropping from a record high of $68,990.90 on Wednesday, according to data from trading data site Coinglass.
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“The general upwards trend isn’t broken, so we will probably climb back up to the all-time high again,” Andrew Tu, an executive at quantitative trading firm Efficient Frontier, told CoinDesk, citing bullish technical analysis.
Others pointed out Taproot, the most significant upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain’s protocol in years, could further push up the underlying currency’s price. The Taproot upgrade is likely to take place this coming weekend or early next week.
Bitcoin’s “price has no doubt been supported by the upcoming Taproot upgrade,” Singapore-based trading firm QCP Capital, wrote in its Telegram channel on Wednesday. “This is the largest upgrade since SegWit in 2017 and will improve a whole string of key functions. ... We are keeping long bitcoin into this major event.”
Technician’s take
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Bitcoin (BTC) buyers took some profits after the cryptocurrency reached an all-time price high near $68,950 on Wednesday. The cryptocurrency is roughly flat over the past 24 hours and could find lower support around the $56,000-$60,000 price range.
Upside momentum is starting to slow, especially given recent overbought signals on the charts. This suggests BTC’s pullback could extend into Asian trading hours, although buyers will likely return around $60,000.
The relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is at the highest level since Oct. 20, which preceded a near-10% drop in BTC’s price.
Further, BTC’s recent all-time price high occurred on lower trading volume and a weaker RSI reading, which means additional buying activity could be limited over the short term.
Important events
3 p.m. HK/SGT (7 a.m. UTC): Meeting of the European Economic and Financial Affairs Council (EcoFin)
4 p.m. HKT/SGT (8 a.m. UTC): Spain’s Consumer Price Index (Oct.)
6 p.m. HKT/SGT (10 a.m. UTC): Eurostat Industrial Production
On CoinDesk TV
In case you missed it, here are the most recent episodes of “First Mover” on CoinDesk TV:
“First Mover” hosts spoke with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez for details on his plan to take his next paycheck in bitcoin, as well as the city’s plan to become the next bitcoin hub. Community Lead for CityCoins Patrick Stanley shared the newly launched NYCcoin, which many see as a rival to the Miamicoin. Plus, market insights from co-founder and President of GSR Markets Rich Rosenblum.
Latest headlines
Longer reads
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Damanick was a crypto market analyst at CoinDesk where he wrote the daily Market Wrap and provided technical analysis. He is a Chartered Market Technician designation holder and member of the CMT Association. Damanick is also a portfolio strategist and does not invest in digital assets.