Bitcoin price may continue to weaken towards the end of the week as a volatile month comes to an end
Bitcoin price traded significantly lower yesterday as the price struggled near the $35,000 resistance level. At press time, BTC is trading at $31,993 and is down about 9% over the past 24 hours. Some analysts expect the weakness to continue into the weekend as a volatile month draws to a close.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Bitcoin price remains jittery and throughout this week, every relief rally is being sold into
Ongoing concerns about regulatory crackdowns and environmental issues have weighed on Bitcoin’s price over the past few months. Over the short term, BTC remains in a consolidation phase between $30,000 support and $40,000 resistance. Oftentimes, trading ranges can be difficult to navigate for some traders.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin and the US dollar both fell while the S&P 500 made record highs as the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation indicator – Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCI) – surged to its highest levels in almost three decades. The expenditure rose 3.4% year-over-year, the highest level since 1991.
Bitcoin dipped also as investors’ focus shifted towards the Wall Street equity markets. The S&P 500 index surged 0.33% to an all-time high of 4,280.70. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite went up 0.6%.
Source: Investing
In another development, Bitcoin and Ethereum are both down 8% in the past 24-hours. Could it be related to the $3.8 billion in options contracts that just expired? On the last Friday of May, a load of options expired—and the market crashed.
Bitcoin options representing 83,700 BTC and 685,000 in Ethereum expired. That’s a record amount of options contracts expiring in one day for Ethereum. And both assets are struggling, which suggests traders opted to sell.
It appears that China’s regulatory crackdown has accelerated the decline in bitcoin’s hashrate over the past month. The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power that is being used to mine and process transactions on the blockchain.
Source: Takenstheorem/Twitter
According to data from Glassnode, the hashrate has dropped to 104 EH/s, the lowest level since June 2020. BitOoda, a digital asset financial services platform, predicted the target hashrate would be around 105 EH/s at the next difficulty reset, which will likely happen on July 3, while the target hashrate will drop further to 85 EH/s at the subsequent difficulty reset on July 19 or July 20.
Source: Coin360
The market was actually already having a hard time. The Top 20 CoinMarketCap has a number of coins that have dropped to double digits, from 10% to 13% on the day. Of which, Polygon (MATIC) is down 13% on the day, trading at $1.07 at press time. Another name, Dogecoin, also recorded a 12% drop in the last 24 hours, trading at $0.24, also down 18% over the past seven days.
As such, it seems the recent good news hasn’t helped the market either. As AZCoin News reported, Tanzania’s central bank has said it is working to prepare for adopting cryptocurrencies, pointing to a possible reversal of a ban it put in place in 2019.
Read more:
- Tanzania Could Be Following El Salvador To Prepare For Cryptocurrency Adoption
- El Salvador To Giveaway $30 Worth Of Bitcoin To Every Adult Citizen Of The Country, Worth At $195 Million