Bitcoin’s price has been in a clear downtrend lately. It has also dragged the altcoin market down. We have a very interesting week ahead since a lot of critical information will be published about the second quarter of 2022. Many technology giants will report results and there’s also the FOMC meeting coming up. The U.S. Q2 GDP numbers will be also released.
Bitcoin’s price is in a downtrend
Bitcoin’s price is 21,100 dollars at the time of writing this article. The price was 21,900 dollars a week ago, which means Bitcoin has fallen about four percent in the past seven days. Bitcoin is currently in a clear downtrend on daily timeframes.
The graph below shows Bitcoin’s price movements on daily candles. There’s also the 50-day moving average (blue line) and the 200-day moving average (purple line).
Bitcoin’s price reached 24,000 dollars last week. This is the highest mark since mid-June when markets crashed because of Celsius and 3AC. The price also broke the 50-day moving average and started to build nice support on it for several days.
The Monday 25th of July candle was too much, though. Bitcoin’s price crashed almost six percent yesterday. The price fell clearly below the 50-day moving average and found support in the blue zone at around 21,000 dollars. This time the price move wasn’t triggered by the stock market! All major indices ended Monday with marginal movements.
One shouldn’t put too much weight on the price movements of the past 5-6 days. What you should follow are the events that take place this week. It’s a critical week, especially for the tech stocks.
Big week pic.twitter.com/2NVWQtojTE
— db (@tier10k) July 25, 2022
We will get Q2 figures from Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple this week. Fed will also announce a new rate hike and the U.S. GDP for Q2 will be published. Quite a week!
A lot of meaningful data comes out in the coming days. This might lead to increased volatility. The fate of the Nasdaq index is depending on the results of the tech giants. Investors will be also following closely what Fed chairman Jerome Powell has to say.
In general, there is more and more weak economic data coming out of the United States. It looks like the Q2 GDP print will be negative, which means recession. This has led to the fact that the US government has started to re-define recession!
Bracing for impact: Even if Thursday's GDP report shows a second consecutive quarter of negative growth, you won't hear the Biden admin using the R-word.
The Council of Economic Advisers is redefining what a recession is…🤔https://t.co/HHBYJKqP5V pic.twitter.com/gecR93vPPj
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) July 24, 2022
It looks like the market is still not fully prepared for a recession. The third quarter might also be very weak. This probably means that the stock market and the crypto market must take one more leg down to lower valuations. We’ve mentioned this view before.
However, the market is always forward-looking. Investors are currently pricing the Fed pivot to take place around January 2023. This is when one could expect the next bull market to begin.
Altcoins have had a bad run
Altcoin investors were euphoric a week ago. Many coins were up more than 20% and mooning further with the help of Ethereum. Now the altcoin market has returned back to earth. All major cryptocurrencies have fallen more than Bitcoin in price.
Below is the list of the top 15 cryptocurrencies and their performance against Bitcoin.
When we exclude altcoins, there is just one cryptocurrency with a positive number on the seven-day column. That is Cardano’s ADA token. Even this coin is up just 0.64% vs. Bitcoin.
There are no coins in the top 100 list with higher than 15% gains against Bitcoin. Trust Wallet Token (TWT), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), QTUM, and OKB are the only ones that are up more than 10% vs. Bitcoin.
Trust Wallet Token is the token of the popular Trust Wallet app. It has made almost all the gains in the previous 24 hours. The reason behind the price surge is probably a new token listing and a very favorable setup from the technical analysis point of view.
Hey #TrustWallet fam 💙#BitMart has listed $TWT! Read the announcement from the @BitMartExchange team below 👇
— Trust – Crypto Wallet (@TrustWallet) July 25, 2022
Qtum is a project we haven’t heard much about since the bull run of 2017. It has recently struggled to even make it to the top 100 list. It looks like the QTUM token is getting a boost from the upcoming hard fork. We expect this coin to revert back to its earlier levels after the update.
OKB is the token of OKX exchange. This exchange is not that popular in Europe, but it is actually one of the most active exchanges in the world. OKX has currently the most derivative volume in the past 24 hours of any exchanges after Binance.
The OKB token made its moves early Tuesday morning. The reason is probably the virtual asset provider license that OKX received in Dubai. Many of the world’s largest exchanges have their sights in the Middle Eastern markets.
Not much is happening in the DeFi sector
The liquidity of the DeFi market has followed the development of the altcoin market again. The TVL of the DeFi sector is 81.81 billion dollars today, which is three billion less than we had a week ago (84.69 billion). Hence, not much has changed.
The protocol top 10 list remains unchanged from last week. That is when Lido moved from fifth to second place by overtaking Aave and Uniswap. Lido has lost more TVL than its rivals but kept second place anyway.
There are no more than three protocols in the top 100 list with TVL gains of more than 15%. One of them is Arrakis Finance, which has climbed to 11th place. It’s not far from entering the top ten. Arrakis is a liquidity management app running on Ethereum and Optimism.
There is just one change in the blockchain rankings; Avalanche and Solana have switched places. All major platforms have lost liquidity besides Arbitrum.
We mentioned Polygon’s zkEVM technology launch in this week’s news overview. Even if this is major news it didn’t help Polygon’s MATIC token to move up in price. There is no major liquidity boost either. All in all it was a quiet week in the DeFi market.