The volatility of the crypto market has prevailed around the holidays – opposed to gold that has hit its new all time high of $4,500 per oz this week. Bitcoin on Tuesday, December 23 reflected a loss of 1.32 percent. At the time of writing the most expensive crypto asset was trading at $87,634.
In conversation with Coin Headlines, market experts said that BTC did briefly tested the $90,000 resistance before consolidating near $88,000 indicating that the underlying momentum is bullish.
“On-chain data shows strong accumulation, as more than 41,000 BTC left exchanges over the past two days, easing sell-side pressure. A decisive break above $90,000 would confirm buyer control and open the path toward $92,000,” said Akshat Siddhant, Lead Quant Analyst, at Mudrex.
Ether joined BTC in clocking losses of under two percent in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing, the second most expensive crypto asset was trading at $2,968 – having fallen from the crucial support zone of $3,000 that it had managed to hit this week.
“Ethereum is showing a similar setup, with exchange reserves dropping to a multi-year low of 16.2 million ETH. This tightening supply supports the case for a year-end rally,” Siddhant noted.
More crypto assets reflected losses than gains on Tuesday. Tokens including BNB, XRP, Solana, Tron, Dogecoin, Chainlink, and Monero registered price dips of under two percent on Tuesday. Zcash, amid the ongoing volatility, slid by nearly seven percent over the last day to trade at $414.
With majority altcoins having registered losses – the overall crypto market cap also dipped by 1.08 percent. Presently, the market valuation stands at $2.97 trillion, data by CoinMarketCap shows.
Analysts have pointed out that the market weakness comes ahead of a record $28.5 billion Bitcoin and Ether options expiry on Deribit this Friday, representing over half of the exchange’s open interest. Derbit explains itself as a professional grade digital asset derivatives platform often touted as the world’s biggest BTC and ETH options exchange.
As of Tuesday, Tron joined Uniswap and a handful of relatively underdog tokens like Canton and Aptos to reflect miniscule gains.
Data by CoinGlass highlighted that 85,513 traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours with the total liquidations touching $258.40 million over the last day.
Market analysts, meanwhile, reportedly believe that investors moving money into gold are doing so amid the ongoing geopolitical changes around Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. and America’s softer monetary stance for now that ushered in three small but consecutive rate cuts.