Crypto Markets Analysis: Bitcoin Trades Flat for the Week; Ether Breaches Top Range of Technical Indicator

Bitcoin and ether maintained their penchant for flat trading this week, with prices moving just 1.3% and 4.6%, respectively, over the most recent seven days.

On a relative basis, BTC’s seven-day performance was 18th among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Ether was 12th in the group.

Over the most recent 30 days, BTC and ETH have moved just 0.7% and 0.8% respectively, reflecting the recent, stagnant price action.

The laggard for the week was LEO, which declined 1.6%, while solana (SOL) led the way with a 34.5% price increase.

An Improved range of price action within the basket of currencies highlighted the week. Where on Dec 16, performance ranged between 30.6% and -15.4%, this week’s range spans 34.5% and -1.6%.

Crypto screen of the day

Despite ETH’s middling performance over the last seven days, the second largest crypto in market value breached the upper range of its Bollinger bands on Friday.

Another coin of note making an appearance on the Bollinger Band screen is Binance coin (BNB). The BNB token garnered attention recently when it failed to win a listing on any major U.S. crypto exchanges, except for Binance.US.

Bollinger bands are a technical indicator that measures an asset’s moving average (often the 20-day), and calculates two standard deviations above and below that price.

Statistically, prices are expected to stay within two standard deviations approximately 95% of the time. Prices moving past the upper Bollinger Band range are often bullish indicators.

CoinDesk Market Index sector performance

Week-to-date performance among CoinDesk’s CMI sectors shows the CoinDesk Culture and Entertainment (CNE) sector leading the way, with the CoinDesk Currency sector (CCY) as the laggard.

The CNE Index, meant to track the performance of assets found within the gaming, metaverse and virtual world sphere, includes the following notable assets: Apecoin (APE), Axie Infinity (AXS), Chilliz (CHZ), Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND).

The CCY index, which measures the performance of many larger currencies in the digital asset universe, includes the following constituents: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Quant (QNT), Stellar (XLM).