Bitcoin was volatile last week, as the price failed to reach levels of $100,000 because there wasn’t a bullish market momentum.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap dropped by approximately 2.6%, to $3.46 billion on late Friday. It had previously reached a high of $3.6 trilllion after Christmas.
The market was characterized by a risk-off attitude due to the lack of solid catalysts. This lull continued into the second half of the week as liquidity and volume of trading dropped because of the holidays.
Market sentiment was subdued by early week profits taken by long-term investors and the poor performance of US Bitcoin ETFs. This spilled over into the altcoin markets as well.
Crypto fear and greed had fallen to neutral levels, around low 50s. This confirms the lack of market momentum.
Only a few of the most popular tokens were able to maintain gains made from the rally following Donald Trump’s victory in the US 2024 elections.
Analysts remained cautious despite the fact that some institutional buying returned at the end of last week. Many analysts expect a more severe correction to occur.
Bitcoin will it rise again?
Bitcoin has shown some resilience in the last week after an expiry of $14.2 billion worth of options with a maximum pain point set at $85,000. Initially, traders were expecting a significant correction.
The flagship cryptocurrency, however, managed to maintain above the key support levels, and peaked at $97,330 just one hour after the event ended.
A prominent trader at TradingView has pointed out BTC’s negative relationship with USDT Dominance Index which measures USDT market share. The metric is showing signs of recovery, as it usually does when BTC reaches a top.
This rebound is a sign of a flight to safety, as traders move their liquidity to Tether in anticipation of volatility and further downward pressure.
Analyst warns of a possible bulltrap situation where the bellwether will see a brief spike, before it quickly corrects. The analyst warned that the abrupt rise in prices could lead many to believe the upward trend is back.
Other forecasts predict that Bitcoin will drop to the range of $80-$60k in the next few days.
Mark Newton, the managing director of Fundstrat’s Bitcoin division, said that Bitcoin could reach a price level as high as $250 000 next year, but it may correct as low as $60,000.
Benjamin Cohen, a fellow analyst, also predicts the same drop. However, he notes that it may be a “flash crash” on the day Donald Trump is inaugurated. He draws parallels to the past performance of Invesco’s QQQ trust as the current BTC prices are showing similarity.
Analyst Ali Martinez, however, believes that Bitcoin must remain above $93,806 or it will risk falling towards $70k. He cites factors like increased BTC transfers and profit-taking, as well as an increase in BTC transfer to exchanges.
This scenario would be invalidated by a close that is sustained above $97.300, or one where the close for a day exceeds $100k.
The leading cryptocurrency was trading at $94,171, a drop of 2.7% in the last week.
The top performing altcoins managed to make significant gains during the past week.
This week’s top altcoins
Bitget token
Over the last week, Bitget (BGB), a stock that has outperformed its market by over 100%, has seen a rally of over 100 percent.
Altcoins with a total market capitalization of more than $11.3 billion were the most popular altcoins on this list.
CoinMarketCap
BGB capitalized on the excitement generated by a number of developments revealed in December.
Recently, BGB has seen a surge in popularity after the Seychelles crypto exchange announced that it will merge BGB and the Bitget Wallet Tokens (BWB) to create a single utility coin.
The previous week, SunPump’s meme coin launcher and the planned Tron collaboration between the exchange and Tron’s blockchain acted as the catalyst to the rally.
Virtuals protocol
Virtuals Protocol VIRTUAL was the most successful artificial intelligence focused cryptocurrency, recording gains of more than 44% in the last week.
The gains on the annual timeframe are over 23,300%. This makes it one of this year’s best performing tokens.
CoinMarketCap
VIRTUAL benefited from the AI agent boom and the growth of the AI industry. The protocol, which is a decentralised AI network, has attracted a multitude of users to launch AI agents over the last year.
The price of VIRTUAL tokens has risen as users lock in more AI agents on the platform.
VIRTUAL had a $3.36 Billion market capitalization at the time of writing.
Move with ease
This week, Movement (MOVE), a layer-2 Ethereum network, rallied by 27% to reach a market capitalization of $2.3 billion on Friday night, only weeks after its launch earlier this month.
CoinMarketCap
MOVE surged in excitement around its December 9 mainnet beta release and token creation event (TGE).
As part of TGE, 1 billion tokens have been distributed. This has led to an increase in trading.
Wrapped Bitcoin was integrated into the network on December 19th, bringing in more liquidity to its decentralized finance ecosystem.
On-metric also shows an increase in activity, with more addresses active on the system.
As new developments unfold, this post BGB and VIRTUAL breakout next week when Bitcoin is below $100k could be updated.
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