Crypto Today: Bitcoin continues to pull away from highs, ether extends rally
|- CBOE halts bitcoin futures trading for a brief period on Wednesday.
- Ether refreshes all-time high above $700.
- Total market cap peaks above $500 billion.
The BTC/USD pair lost nearly $2000 on Wednesday and tested the $16K handle before going into a consolidation phase above that level. According to the latest available data on coinmarketcap.com, the pair was trading at $16680, losing 4.85% on the day. Today's slide in bitcoin prices seems to be the product of the ongoing profit-taking that was triggered by the CBOE's launch of bitcoin futures trading earlier this week, which pumped up the transaction fees and times.
On the other hand, XBT (CBOE bitcoin futures) lost nearly 10% during the American trading hours and forced CBOE to halt trading for a few minutes. At the moment, XBT was trading near $17K, losing 5% on the day.
Assessing the technical outlook of bitcoin, in an article written for coindesk.com, FXStreet analyst Omkar Godbole explained "a break below $16,750 (doji candle low) would add credence to the breach of the ascending trend line and the doji reversal. In such a case, BTC could test support at 15,400 (confluence of upward sloping 50-MA and rising trend line). On a larger scheme of things, only a daily close (as per UTC) below $14,000 would abort the bullish view."
In the meantime, ether, the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume, continued to attract investors as the next best alternative to bitcoin, pushing the ETH/USD pair to a new all-time high at $740. Ethereum's market dominance, which dropped below the %10 mark a week ago, increased to 14% on Wednesday while bitcoin's volume eased to 56%, reflecting the demand shifting from bitcoin to ether. At the time of writing, the biggest gainers of the day in the crypto space were Tron and Verge, which gained 88% and 63% respectively.
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