On Thursday, Bitcoin was
down 1.1%, ending the day at around $29.5K, despite a buoyant stock market
performance. Selling resumed on Friday morning, pushing the price back to
$28.9K.

The observed divergence is bucking the trend of close correlation that has
developed over the last few days.

Yesterday’s sharp 5.5% dip in BTCUSD within hours to $28K was much less of a
move than expected, as there was more than a 3% rise in the Nasdaq in the
background. As a result, bitcoin was sharply recovered due to increased risk
appetite.

As a result, on the intraday charts, the converging triangle has turned into a
channel with more frequent tests of the lower boundary near $29K. In our view,
the previous consolidation might be just another phase of consolidation, which,
when completed, would quickly take the price to the next lower level, as it did
from April to May.

The final target of the central mass of bears might be the area of $20-23k, but
the movement there might be stretched in time and decomposed into stages.

Confirming that bears dominate the crypto market is Ethereum, which has lost
about 10% in the last 24 hours to $1750, finding itself in a lower bound since
April 2021. In ETHUSD, a final landing is seen in the $1200-1300 area.

Other altcoins in the top 10 have fallen from 2% (XRP) to 13.8% (Solana).

Total cryptocurrency market capitalisation, according to CoinMarketCap, fell 5%
overnight to $1.20 trillion.

The cryptocurrency fear and greed index was unchanged by Friday, remaining at
12 points (‘extreme fear’) on the back of solid Bitcoin momentum.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell by 4.33% to 29.9 trillion hashes, the most
significant drop last July. According to Arcane Research, the profitability of
mining continues to plummet.

The CEO of Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, said the crypto
industry’s history and prospects are convincing more US congress members to
support the development of digital assets.

Investment management firm ARK Investment Management has reapplied to the SEC
to launch a bitcoin-ETF.

Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has launched a new stablecoin
cryptocurrency, MXNT, pegged to the Mexican peso. It will be moveable on
Ethereum, Tron and Polygon blockchains.

This article was written by FxPro’s Senior Market Analyst Alex
Kuptsikevich.