Bitcoin dips to trade flat; Solana gains; Polygon, BNB lead losers

Bitcoin dips to trade flat; Solana gains; Polygon, BNB lead losers

Time Stamp: July 4, 2023 9:03 PM
Source Node: 2749712

Bitcoin and Ether traded little changed on Wednesday morning in Asia, while the rest of the top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies were mixed. Bitcoin fell back under US$31,000, but its dominance in total crypto market cap is gaining, a sign of market recovery. Solana added to its gains this week, while Polygon’s Matic and the BNB tokens led the daily losers list. Bitcoin Cash has taken the number 12 spot in the list of top tokens by market cap after its listing on the new EDX Markets exchange.

Crypto price pause

Bitcoin fell 1.0% over the last 24 hours to US$30,801 at 07:20 a.m. in Hong Kong, shaving its weekly gain down to 0.39%, according to data from CoinMarketCap. On Tuesday, the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency reached US$31,371, its highest since June 2022, on the back of optimism about spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications by a raft of Wall Street heavyweights, including Blackrock.  

The level of Bitcoin dominance sits near 50%, which is the highest since April 2021. Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, says this price uptrend in Bitcoin is a typical market recovery pattern in which the most significant asset in the sector attracts buyers first.

“It will probably take about a year of Bitcoin price recovery before crypto enthusiasts start looking for one with higher risk, pushing altcoins higher and leading to a new wave of capitalisation swell,” said Kuptsikevich, in an email statement. He said he doesn’t see altcoins rallying before November.

Bitcoin’s recent price recovery was sparked by Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset manager, filing an application last month to launch a Bitcoin ETF and refiling it again after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicated it lacked details. 

Several other U.S.-based asset managers, such as Fidelity Investments and WisdomTree, have filed their own Bitcoin ETFs, suggesting mainstream finance recognizes the Bitcoin opportunity and wants to offer clients the access to its price movements without actually owning the token.

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, looked to be on a run to break US$2,000 this week, but fell back 0.81% to US$1,941 today after a gain of 2.64% for the past seven days. 

The other top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization traded mixed to flat, with Solana leading gainers with a 2.0% rise to US$19.45. The token has surged 15.35% in the past week. 

Polygon’s Matic and Binance’s BNB token were amongst the losers — Matic lost 1.99% to US$0.6981, though it’s still up 4.29% for the week. BNB lost 1.68% to US$242.83, cutting its weekly gain to 1.81%.

Altcoins have suffered from the SEC’s crackdown on tokens that they deem financial securities. Solana, Cardano, Polygon and BNB were among those that the regulator named as unregistered securities in its lawsuits filed against the Coinbase and Binance.US exchanges in early June.

While these altcoins have partially recovered after an initial plunge following the SEC suits, several trading platforms including California-based Robinhood Markets Inc., Israel-based eToro and UK’s Revolut ceased support or limited access to some of these tokens for their U.S.-based customers.

Bitcoin Cash climbed to become the twelfth largest non-stablecoin cryptocurrency by market capitalization on CoinMarketCap at US$53.8 billion. The Bitcoin spin-off is one of the four cryptocurrencies listed on EDX Markets, the Wall Street-backed, compliance-focused crypto exchange that launched on June 20 in the U.S. 

Bitcoin Cash had a market capitalization of US$20.6 billion and was valued at US$106.34 on June 19. It has since surged 160% to US$276.87. It dipped 1.70% in the last 24 hours.

The total cryptocurrency market cap fell 0.80% to US$1.21 trillion in the last 24 hours, while crypto trading volume fell 22.22% to US$31.14 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

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