What seemed a week of upwards momentum for the crypto sector vanished in the past 24 hours, as Bitcoin suffered from a massive price hit. The leading cryptocurrency to date saw an almost $200-per-minute slump, forcing the market to retreat below $200 billion total capitalization.
Apart from Bitcoin, which almost deleted its gains from the start of the week, other crypto projects felt the same downwards push. Ethereum (ETH) lost 7% off its price, currently trading at $159,20 despite a weekly high of $172.
Ripple (XRP) fell with 7% pricewise, shaking hands around $0.1886. The third-largest cryptocurrency almost managed to mitigate the massive price drop due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, reaching levels of $0.203868. The rest of the top-100 chart is almost entirely in the red, with projects losing 2-10% of their gains from the past week. The stablecoin realm managed to record increased trading volumes, mainly due to outflow from holding Bitcoin.
Crypto traders noted that Bitcoin’s $6,900 trading level is the first major support zone for crypto bulls. If the weekend pressure manages to overcome the bullish resistance, the next possible low for Bitcoin is expected at around $6,000. Crypto trader Michael van de Poppe commented on the current market situation, noting that “we might see a liquidity shortage at $7,500-7,700, which would result in a sharp price drop.”
Indeed, crypto experts pointed out that technically, Bitcoin formed a “double-top” bearish formation, which bulls didn’t manage to hold. Some experts think the downwards correction is most probably due to whale traders. Twitter crypto bot WhaleAlert exposed a series of mid-size transactions from exchanges to private crypto wallets. The amounts, ranging between 900 and 5,000 BTC, are too small to be classified as internal restructuring, but large enough to be noticed. For example, WhaleAlert tweeted about a 5,000 BTC transaction (worth $36,484,419 at the time of publication) between Bitfinex and a yet unspecified wallet address.
It seems whales are moving their stash to somewhere safe, probably expecting another portion of a downward correction, which correlates with the increased trading volumes in stablecoins, as they are commonly referred to as a gateway between fiat and crypto.
Meanwhile, the crypto market seems to be engulfed by fear, according to the Fear & Greed Index. The index indicates a measure of 15. The traditional stock market seems a bit more trustworthy, at least from the Index reading of 43, as the U.S. Federal Reserve issued at least two trillion in stimulus packages to U.S. citizens.
However, some crypto projects continue to thrive amid the global market recession and virus outbreaks. ChainLink (LINK), for example, managed to go up 32% just from the past week. The oracle platform’s token also almost doubled itself from the COVID-19 lows of mid-March. However, LINK is still 38% of its all-time high of $4,97, recorded days before the massive market wipe-out.