Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin (BTC) volumes have surged to a five-week high, contributing to a strong Thursday trading session that resulted in the BTC/USDT pair closing at 3.7% higher at US$29,470.
Although Friday’s Asia trading session has been turbulent, the US$29,400 level has been maintained, raising hopes for a breakthrough above the critical 30k resistance point. Profit takers have placed significant quantities of sell orders at this point.
With an even distribution of long and short liquidations on the futures market, the sentiment is currently evenly split between the bears and the bulls as the week draws to a close.
#BTC witnessed a surge in trading volumes to a five-week high in the previous 24 hours, boosting a robust Thursday trading session that concluded with the #BTC/#USDT pair closing at 3.7% higher at US$29,470.
While Friday's #Asia trading session has been relatively volatile, it… pic.twitter.com/elfxnxyqW2
— Share_Talk ™ (@Share_Talk) April 28, 2023
During the seven-day period, Bitcoin has gained nearly 5%, buoyed by several catalysts, including renewed concerns in the traditional finance sector following First Republic Bank’s precarious situation, as well as some positive earnings and stock price movements from major tech companies such as Meta and Microsoft.
Yesterday, Ethereum (ETH) rose by around 2.3%, and an additional 0.3% this morning, pushing the ETH/USDT pair above US$1,910.
Despite potential further gains throughout the day, it may be challenging for ether to surpass US$1,950 due to significant selling pressure on the Binance order book.
On a week-on-week basis, ETH underperformed compared to Bitcoin, experiencing a 0.5% dip across the period, indicating that the significant gains achieved following the Shanghai upgrade have run their course.
ETH’s underperformance had a knock-on effect on the Optimism (OP) Ethereum Layer-2 protocol, which ended the week more than 10% lower, with a market capitalisation below US$685mln.
Blue-chip altcoins, such as Polkadot (DOT), BNB, Dogecoin (DOGE), Polygon (MATIC), and Shiba Inu (SHIB), all finished the week slightly lower.
Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Ripple (XRP) fared somewhat better, each adding between 0.5% and 1.5%.
In the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, PancakeSwap (CAKE) plummeted by over 23% due to a significant spike in token inflation, pushing the decentralized exchange’s market capitalisation below US$516mln.
Derivatives exchange Synthetix (SNX) also experienced a poor week, losing nearly 10% of its value.
Overall, it was a positive week for the cryptocurrency markets, with the global market cap increasing by 1.8% to US$1.21tn.
