Bitcoin struggled to hold above the closely-watched $20,000 level, extending a period of marked volatility that saw huge weekend swings.<\/p>\n
The largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 4.8% on Monday and was trading at $19,914 as of 7:32 a.m. in London. Ether at one point shed 7.8% but held above $1,000. Altcoins like Solana, Cardano and Dogecoin declined.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin sank almost 15% on Saturday, then vaulted back above $20,000 with a surge surge of similar magnitude on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The pattern of swings suggest investor sentiment remains highly fragile as the Federal Reserve and other central banks go full throttle to fight inflation with interest-rate hikes that drain liquidity from markets.<\/p>\n
The T3 Bitcoin Volatility Index, a measure of the token\u2019s expected 30-day volatility, has jumped back to the highs of mid-May, when the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin rocked markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cA toxic mix of bad news cycles and higher interest rates has hurt the crypto market and we can anticipate more volatility in the upcoming weeks,\u201d said Feroze Medora, director of APAC trading at Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss\u2019s Gemini crypto platform, in a note on Monday.<\/p>\n
As Bitcoin crashed below $20,000 last week for the first time since late 2020, attention has turned toward a cascade of liquidations that threaten to worsen the crypto rout. There were a total of $879 million worth of liquidations over the weekend, data from Coinglass shows.<\/p>\n
Current trading patterns in Bitcoin and Ether indicate some large crypto holders are \u201cchasing liquidations to profit from forcing other players out,\u201d said Chiente Hsu, chief executive officer of decentralized finance platform ALEX.<\/p>\n
Adding to the uncertainty is the intense pressure on DeFi applications. Their popularity as a source of high yields soared when pandemic-era stimulus drove a record-breaking crypto boom.<\/p>\n
Now they are being forced to take unprecedented measures\u00a0to protect themselves\u00a0against a chain reaction of liquidations. Embattled crypto lending platform Celsius Network Ltd. said Monday it needs\u00a0more time\u00a0to stabilize its liquidity and operations after freezing deposits earlier in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cExpect more pockets of forced selling of Bitcoin and Ether as the market figures out who is swimming naked,\u201d Arthur Hayes, co-founder of crypto exchange BitMEX, said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
He said he doesn\u2019t know if the selling is over but \u201cfor those skilled knife-catchers, there may yet be additional opportunities to buy coin from those who must whack every bid no matter the price.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bitcoin struggled to hold above the closely-watched $20,000 level, extending a period of marked volatility that saw huge weekend swings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":439216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-449444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-bitcoin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}