Bitcoin‘s price saw a drop on Wednesday during the early morning hours in Asia, causing it to drop below the US$26,000 barrier.
Ether also saw a decline and is currently trading close to the support level of $1,600 USD.
There was a general tendency for the top 10 cryptocurrencies, excluding stablecoins, to either maintain their previous levels or move to a lower price. Notably, Solana’s SOL was among the assets whose value dropped the most as a result of the decline. The Forkast 500 NFT index likewise went through a period of falling prices. Concurrently, reports began to circulate regarding the sentencing of a former manager who worked for the NFT marketplace OpenSea for engaging in insider trading.
On a separate front, U.S. stock futures showed a little improvement after the market on Wall Street had a lackluster performance when it came time to close the previous trading day. In addition, S&P Global Ratings joined Moody’s in lowering the ratings of a number of banks based in the United States.
New Bitcoin support level at US$25,000?
According to figures from CoinMarketCap, as of 7:20 a.m. in Hong Kong, Bitcoin had dropped by 0.71% in the last 24 hours, ending at US$25,946.61. It lost 11.05% over the course of the week, which is a big number. After a big drop of almost 10% the previous Friday, the top cryptocurrency has been selling in the US$26,000 range for most of this week. But in the early hours of Wednesday, it dropped to US$25,520.73, which was its lowest point.
After last week’s big drop, many crypto experts are predicting that the price could go down even more. Ali Martinez, a commenter on social media, has found that the token’s new critical support level is at US$25,400. Keith Alan, co-founder of analytics company Material Indicators, thinks it could go as low as US$25,000. Both experts warned that a breach of these support levels could potentially cause the price to plummet to a new low within the range of US$20,000.
Wade Guenther, a partner at the U.S.-based asset management company Wilshire Phoenix, said that if Bitcoin’s price fell below the US$25,000 support level, it could be a sign of a change in the bearish trend.
Technical measures like Bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) suggest that the price of the token may be depressed.
“The 50-day moving average (MA) is currently moving away from the 200-day MA in a clear way,” Guenther said. He also said that this could be a cause for worry because, according to a usual way of looking at things, when the 50-day MA goes below the 200-day MA, it is a sign that the market is going down.
Investors are eagerly waiting for a big decision in the court disagreement between Grayscale Investments and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Grayscale has officially asked regulators for permission to turn its Bitcoin trust product (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). But this choice was put off twice in a row last week.
This new delay has added to the delays that have already happened with other Bitcoin apps. Notably, on August 11, the SEC decided to give Ark Invest, led by Cathie Wood, more time to decide on the ETF application.
In a separate event, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Balancer announced on Tuesday that a flaw had been found that affects a few of its funding pools.
“Emergency mitigation measures” have been put in place by the company to protect user assets. Wednesday morning’s update showed that 1.4% of the total locked value (TVL) on Balancer was still open to attack. Based on what DefiLlama knows, this would be worth about $9.19 million.
Ether also went down, by 2.20%, to US$1,631.18. This is similar to what happened to Bitcoin. This was a drop of 10.75% from the week before.
In the last 24 hours, most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies that were not stablecoins went down. But there were a few outliers, like Tron’s TRX, which made a small gain of 0.20%. On the other hand, Solana’s SOL token was one of the ones that went down. It fell by 3.35 percent to US$20.54 and by 13.78% for the week.
In the same way, Binance’s BNB token also went down in value. It fell to US$204.40, which was the lowest price in 14 months. This happened after a story from The Wall Street Journal said that the biggest cryptocurrency exchange helped Russian organizations move money abroad after Russia invaded Ukraine, which could have broken international rules. Binance denied the claim, saying that it follows international rules about sanctions against Russia.
The story is important because Binance is still having trouble with regulators. In June, the SEC sued the company for allegedly breaking securities laws.
The total market value of all cryptocurrencies moved closer to the important US$1 trillion mark by 1.46% in the last 24 hours, to US$1.04 trillion. At the same time, trade volume went up by 8.88% and reached US$31.95 billion.
