Market Wrap: Traders Brace for Higher Volatility; Altcoins Underperform

Most cryptocurrencies traded lower on Monday, although selling pressure appears to be slowing compared to last week. Bitcoin was down about 2% over the past 24 hours, compared to a 3% decline in ether and a 6% drop in Solana’s SOL token.

The underperformance of alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) on Monday suggests traders are still being cautious. Altcoins tend to decline more than bitcoin during market downturns due to their higher risk profile.

The latest price declines resulted in losses for some leveraged traders. For example, more than 109,000 traders were hit with liquidations over the past 24 hours as bitcoin dipped below $40,000 on Monday for the first time since September.

“The volatility markets do not seem to be reflecting “extreme fear,” crypto trading firm QCP Capital wrote in a Telegram announcement on Monday. “In fact, over Friday and the weekend, our volatility desk saw large call buying interest especially in both BTC and ETH,” QCP wrote.

As crypto prices fall, fund investors remain bearish. Record weekly outflows from digital asset investment products totaled $207 million in the seven days through Jan. 7.

The spate of redemptions adds to pressure on the market that began in mid-December, bringing the four-week outflow total to $465 million, CoinDesk’s Lyllah Ledesma reported.

Investment funds focused on bitcoin saw outflows of $107 million, while ether-focused funds saw outflows of $39 million last week, bringing the last four-week run of outflows to $180 million.

Most digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day lower.

Largest winners:

Largest losers:

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive, and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk 20 is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges.