The bitcoin market has been trading sideways for several weeks. The good news is that the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum are finding support and holding above it, which is slowing down the downward trend. The tendency is still present today, just like it was yesterday when crypto markets traded sideways. Prices are constant, and trade volume is still rather strong. Let’s look at the recent news that impacts the crypto markets.
Key Notes:
- As long as Bitcoin and Ethereum maintain support, cryptocurrency markets will continue to move sideways.
- The critical support levels for Bitcoin are $18-19k, and the cryptocurrency is anticipated to hold support for the ensuing weeks.
- As 40,572 BTC leave exchanges, the available supply of bitcoin is down 8.48%.
- Data show that the UK’s inflation is at a 40-year high, indicating that the global economy isn’t doing very well.
- Ethereum devs disagree with the discussion of blockchain censorship, which might lead to a schism.
- Trading volume is still rather high, but volatility is going down, which suggests the market is getting ready for a bull run before the year is through.
Crypto Market Update
The fear and greed index for cryptocurrencies today is 23. The market is still in extreme fear, although conditions are better than they were the previous week when the index was at 20 points.
Take a look at our Bitcoin price analysis and prediction from earlier this week:
“After Bitcoin found temporal support at the $18,000 level in June, it formed a higher high and higher low pattern to reach the $25,200 level – an exhaustion point – before falling back to the mentioned support in September.”
The $18k and $19k levels, which the cryptocurrency asset has held for several months, are some important support levels for BTC.
While the price of Bitcoin may be difficult to maintain above the $20k support level, the $18-19k resistance levels are very strong. The sideways trading market may allow BTC to gain momentum before a bull run.
According to data from Santiment, the number of bitcoins departing exchanges increased significantly yesterday and was the largest single-day movement (40,572 $BTC) in the preceding four months.
👌 #Bitcoin saw a massive surge of coins moving off of exchanges yesterday, its largest daily amount (40,572 $BTC) in 4 months. The supply of coins on exchanges is down to 8.48%. As exchange supply decreases, it de-risks chances of a future sell-off. https://t.co/gi4ki39Z6T pic.twitter.com/OKtdS6RUJY
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) October 19, 2022
Data on UK inflation are one factor in today’s cryptocurrency markets’ sluggish developments. AP News reports that UK inflation has increased to a 40-year high.
In line with the report:
“While the jump in food costs took the biggest bite out of household budgets in Britain last month, prices are rising across the board. Transportation costs jumped 10.9%, furniture and household goods rose 10.8%, and clothing was up 8.4%. Housing costs rose 9.3%, driven by the rising price of energy.”
Global inflation is on the rise, which indicates that a trend reversal in the crypto markets is still some time off. Since cryptocurrencies are a worldwide phenomenon, the status of the world economy has an impact on their pricing and will probably result in more adverse pressure in the upcoming weeks.
Ethereum Market Update
In other developments, Ethereum is battling censorship problems, where a dispute about how to handle transactions made by unscrupulous actors and millions of dollars in cash that has been stolen could cause the chain to fork.
In accordance with a Coindesk report:
“Ethereum may soon split into two, according to some developers. As the second-largest blockchain network vies for mainstream acceptance, it has increasingly fallen under the microscope of governments and regulators eager to tame the platform.”
Since forks cause community division and dilute investors, miners, and supporters, they are rarely advantageous to the original network.
For blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies, censorship has long been a contentious topic since various individuals have different views on how much control a blockchain and its creators should have over transactions.
For instance, Binance can work with validators to add addresses to a blacklist and has a respectable level of control over the exchange’s ability to freeze accounts. However, Ethereum does not yet have a method for blacklisting addresses and does not have a solid plan of attack against hackers and exploiters who have collected billions of dollars worth of stolen assets over the years.
We can only hope that the Ethereum developers can come to a consensus without forking the network as the censorship discussion goes political.
Conclusion
With a 1% decrease in the previous day, Bitcoin is currently trading at $19,225. With a $26 billion trading volume over the past day, its market valuation, which is down 8% from the previous day, is $368 billion.
At $1,299 per coin, Ethereum has decreased by 1% in the previous day’s trading. $159 billion is the market cap; in the last day’s trading, $9.1 billion was traded, a 6% decrease.
This week, the crypto market will most likely remain sideways and find support between the $19k level for bitcoin (BTC) and the $1,200–$1,300 level for ether (ETH).
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any projects.
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Image Source: Shubham Dhage on Unsplash // Image Effects by Colorcinch
