The past week was a wild one at the cryptocurrency market but that’s also true for legacy markets as well. This just goes to show that the mounting institutional involvement in crypto is, in part, responsible for the correlation, but that’s a topic for another discussion.
Even though Bitcoin is trading almost flat on the weekly chart, the past seven days have been anything but calm. Naturally, most of the volatility had to do with the war between Iran and Israel.
Around June 23rd, BTC dropped below $100K for the first time since early May, sending the markets into a state of discomfort and causing over $1 billion worth of liquidated positions. This was caused mostly because of the news that the US had decided to enter the war on the side of Israel and bomb strategic nuclear sites in Iran.
The turmoil didn’t stop there, but doomsayers had it all wrong because on the very next day, the situation started de-escalating following what many believed to be a staged retaliation by Iran targeting a US base in Qatar, causing minor damage.
Following this situation, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire and despite the minor tensions, it appears that the conflict is now subdued. Markets reacted positively, with BTC rallying from the sub-$100K region to a high at around $108,000.
At the time of this writing, the cryptocurrency is trading at $107,000, but the majority of altcoins, as you can see in the heatmap below, took a much more considerable punch. Many of them are down between 4% and 10%, signaling, once again at Bitcoin’s unshakable dominance in the past few months.
In other news, one of the more interesting developments came from Chainlink as Mastercard – one of the world’s leading payment processing companies – announced a partnership with the aims of enabling its 3 billion users to seamlessly buy crypto. This is what adoption looks like.
Another are that many are monitoring closely is the legal battle between the US SEC and Ripple. A lot of people were expecting the case to officially end this week, but the presiding judge tossed the parties’ motion for indicative ruling, which means that the whole thing will be dragged out, possibly for another few months. It all depends on Ripple now.
All in all, the market fared very well in the face of mounting geopolitical turmoil and economic instability, but it’s very interesting to see how things will develop in the weeks to come.
Shocking Amount of BTC Absorbed by Buyers During Recent Market Turmoil. Over the past couple of weeks, market participants have sold about 720,000 BTC, the majority of which was off-loaded by relatively new holders. It’s very impressive that the market was able to absorb this quantity without falling off a cliff.
Last Time Bitcoin Did This, the Price Went From $60K to $100K. The LTH/STH ratio is creeping up. This particularly positive on-chain metric has previously been the precursor to massive rallies such as the one from $28K to $60K and from $60K to $100,000. We know that history doesn’t repeat, but will it rhyme?
