The cryptocurrency market saw a mixed performance early Wednesday, with Bitcoin and Ethereum remaining largely flat and all coins in the top 10 moving less than 3%—except for the resurgent Dogecoin.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, has been trading sideways for the third day in a row after gaining a major bullish impulse in early 2024. Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin has gone up 2%, rising from $69,056 to its current price of $70,715.
The coin has been testing a resistance barrier at the $71,000 zone, which has kept prices on hold for the week. Every time Bitcoin broke that barrier during this week, prices corrected all the way back below $70,000. As a result, Bitcoin hasn't made any significant moves since surging on Monday.
However, the body of today's daily candlestick appears to be filling what was all wicks in the previous days, meaning that Bitcoin could be heading towards a bullish breakout in the immediate future if prices don’t retrace as they did in the last two days.
The Squeeze Momentum Indicator, which tries to estimate the market phase of a specific asset, shows that prices are not particularly bullish or bearish—and hints to a possible a possible switch in the trend, meaning the coin could correct in the upcoming days if today's candlestick fails to remain bullish and break past the $71,500. If that is the case, the strongest support is set at around $64,000.
There is still a bullish trend in play, especially considering other indicators and a longer time frame. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) of 61 shows that 61% of all traders are buying BTC. Although the indicator shows some bullish dominance, it doesn’t mean that the coin is overbought. An RSI at this point shows that there could be still room to grow on a medium-term basis before buyers plan to realize their gains.
The gap between the EMA 10 and the EMA 55—the average prices of the last 10 and 55 days, respectively—stopped closing and is now somewhat in parallel, showing that there is still a bullish trend in play. However, the markets are still recovering from the past correction.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is also flat, following Bitcoin's lead. The price of ETH has gone up less than 1% from $3,527 to $3,557 in the last 24 hours. This rise cancels the losses of yesterday's candlestick, but marks the fourth day of Ethereum trading sideways with prices swinging between $3,450 and $3,670.
The coin still has the bearish correction heavily influencing its price behavior. For almost two weeks, the token was trading below its median price of the last 10 days, so the ADX at 35 shows that there is still a bearish presence in the price performance for the immediate future.
On longer time frames, however, the coin looks bullish. The Squeeze Momentum Indicator shows that there is a switch in the market cycle, and the coin is just starting its bullish upswing. This is a breath of fresh air for traders, especially considering that the coin appears to have finally broken past the resistance set by the EMA10 and is trading back above it, which is considered really bullish.
Smaller coins surge
However, other tokens in the crypto realm are beating the market's malaise and have experienced major gains in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a Bitcoin fork born in 2017 to promote bigger blocks and discourage layer-2 solutions, has been the second-best performer among the top 20 coins with a more than 5% price jump in the last 24 hours. The coin is now slightly correcting, but it was up 13% as of earlier today, which made it the second-best performing coin of the top 100.
Today, the price of BCH went from $541 to $570. The coin’s movement is extremely bullish, trading well over its EMA10 (which is currently at about $485) all thanks to a massive 12% pump yesterday when it went from $477 to $541. Right now, all indicators look bullish for Bitcoin Cash.
Meme coins are performing really well, too, with Dogecoin, BONK, and Floki Inu commanding the top 100 with gains of more than 12% each.
Dogecoin jumped over the $0.20 mark late Wednesday for the first time since 2021 and has continued to rise since. It briefly popped over $0.22 earlier Thursday and is currently up 17% on the day at a price of $0.218. It's the largest gainer in the top 100 today.
Also notably, KuCoin's KCS token, which is recovering after the announcement of United States charges against the crypto exchange on Tuesday, is up 10.43% today. MakerDAO's MKR token, which spiked 11.81%, set a new ATH today at $3,549 to register its best-performing month ever.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.