Bitcoin (BTC) price has been stuck in a falling wedge pattern for the past two months and during this time it has tested the $37,600 support on multiple instances. Adding to this “bearish” price action, BTC is down 16% year-to-date, which is in line with the Russell 2000s performance. The real driver of Bitcoin’s current price action is investors’ concerns about worsening macroeconomic conditions. Professional investors are worried about the impact of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tightening economic policies and on May 3, billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones said that the environment for investors is worse than ever …

Bitcoin (BTC) has been unable to break from the 26-day-long descending channel. Investors are uncomfortable holding volatile assets after the United States Federal Reserve pledged to reduce its $9 trillion balance sheet. While inflation has been surging worldwide, the first signs of an economic downturn showed as the United Kingdom's retail sales fell 1.4% in March. Moreover, Japan's industrial production dropped 1.7% in March. Lastly, the U.S. gross domestic product fell 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022. This bearish macroeconomic scenario can partially explain why Bitcoin has been on a downtrend since early April. Still, one needs to analyze …

The last time Bitcoin (BTC) traded above $50,000 was Dec. 27, 2021. Since then, four months have passed, but traders seem somewhat optimistic that inflation has hit the necessary threshold to trigger cryptocurrency adoption. In theory, the 8.5% inflation in the United States means that every five years, the prices increase by 50%. This essentially turns $100 into $66 by slashing 33% of the dollar’s purchasing power. The U.S. Federal Reserve FOMC meeting is expected to rule on the interest rates on May 4, but more importantly, the FED is expected to announce a program to offload part of its …

The total crypto market capitalization has been holding a slightly ascending trend for the past three months, and the $1.75 trillion support was most recently tested on April 27 as Bitcoin (BTC) bounced at $38,000 and Ether (ETH) at $2,800 on April 27. The crypto market’s aggregate capitalization showed a 3.5% decrease in the last seven days. Meanwhile, notable losers were an 18.8% loss from Ripple (XRP), a 10.2% loss from Cardano (ADA) and a 9.7% drop in Polkadot (DOT) price. Analyzing a broader range of altcoins provides a more balanced picture that includes 25% gains from some gaming and …

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Chris Giancarlo, known by some as Crypto Dad during his tenure from 2017 to 2019, spoke on the topic of U.S. crypto regulation at the Crypto Bahamas conference on Thursday. He called the current U.S. regulations, many of which were written in the 1930s, “nonapplicable” to the current financial reality of cryptocurrencies. Giancarlo expressed concern that central banks were usurping crypto. “If you read the utterances out of the European Central Bank, there is nothing but FUD toward non-sovereign crypto,” he said, noting that China took the same approach when it banned all …

Layer-2 (L2) solutions for the Ethereum (ETH) network have grown in prominence over the last year because of the need for scalable networks that offer low-fee transactions and led to numerous projects that built cross-chain bridges with competing blockchain networks. One project that has benefitted from the growth of the L2 scaling solutions is Synthetix (SNX), a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that enables the creation of synthetic assets and offers exposure to derivatives and futures trading on the blockchain. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $4.44 on April 11, the price of …

Up until April 25, Bitcoin (BTC) bulls had been defending the $38,000 level, but bulls were caught off-guard by the recent drop. As Bitcoin plunged from $46,700 to $37,700 between April 5 and 26, most of the bullish bets for the upcoming $1.96 billion monthly options expiry became worthless. Regulatory concerns continue to pose a threat to Bitcoin and on April 26, the New York State Assembly passed a bill banning new proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency carbon-based mining facilities in the state. Fortunately for Bitcoin, mining equipment is portable so there's no real risk to the Bitcoin network's security but the …

Analyzing Ether's (ETH) current price chart paints a bearish picture, which is largely justified by the 11% drop over the past month, but other traditional finance assets faced more extreme price corrections in the same period. The Invesco China Technology ETF (CQQ) is down 31% and the Russell 2000 declined by 8%. Currently, traders fear that losing the descending channel support at $2,850 could lead to a stronger price downturn, but this largely depends on how derivatives traders are positioned along with the Ethereum network's on-chain metrics. According to Defi Llama, the Ethereum network's total value locked (TVL) flattened in …

Bitcoin (BTC) remains below $40,000 for the third consecutive day and the most likely source of the volatility is the worsening condition of traditional markets. For instance, the S&P 500 is down 5% since April 20 WTI crude price dropped 9.5% in seven days, erasing all of the gains accrued since March 1. Meanwhile, China has been struggling to contain its worst outbreak of Covid-19 despite strict lockdowns in Shanghai and according to Timothy Moe, chief Asia-Pacific equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, "it's no surprise, and it makes all sorts of logical sense that the market should be concerned about …

Ethereum Layer 2-based crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX has vowed to become “100% decentralized by EOY” via the protocol's V4 update. dYdX primarily offers perpetual contracts, which are derivatives products that borrow elements from both spot margin trading and futures trading but do not have an expiry date. At present only certain components of dYdX are decentralized, including its Ethereum smart contracts, governance and staking. However its “orderbook and matching engine” are managed by dYdX Trading Inc. — the team that developed the platform. dYdX announced the V4 update on Twitter yesterday with a new roadmap outlining that: “You are …

Ethereum's long-awaited transition away from proof-of-work (PoW) mining has recently suffered another delay and is expected to occur in the second half of 2022. Ethereum developer Tim Beiko stated on April 13 that "it won't be June, but likely in the few months after. No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum." An automated increase in mining difficulty designed to make PoW mining less attractive is set to become active around May. Known as the "difficulty bomb," it will eventually make blocks "unbearably slow," forcing the upgrade to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Such …

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $40,000 support on April 18, and the two-week 15% correction was enough to prompt predictions of $30,000 prices in the near term. Meanwhile, regulatory uncertainties continue to be a key concern for investors, including the failed European Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) proposed rules for ”unhosted” private wallets. For instance, exchanges started to demand additional information on their users just last week, causing some discomfort to traders. Europe regulation “near miss” brings distress The European Union Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted on March 14 to ban or restrict proof-of-work-based crypto …