The crypto market has retreated further within the range

Market overview

The crypto market has taken a slight step back over the past day. Its market capitalisation has fallen by approximately 0.7% to $2.91T. Cryptocurrencies reacted to a fresh wave of selling in debt markets and the dollar's strength, choosing to ignore the Nasdaq-100's new all-time highs, driven by a handful of names. This market sentiment is fostering a cautious, wait-and-see attitude, as pressure in the debt markets could at any moment escalate into a broad-based sell-off. Nevertheless, this wariness is no reason to sell just yet, and cautious traders will want to see how the market behaves at the boundaries of the $2.85T–$2.95T range first. The most significant movements over the past 24 hours have been seen in Filecoin (+11.3%), Internet Computer (+5.1%) and Near Protocol (+3.6%), while the worst performers were Dash (−6.1%), Stellar (−4.2%) and The Graph (−3.5%).

On Monday, Bitcoin once again failed to break through its recent highs, retreating to $85.2K by the start of active trading in Europe on Tuesday, while remaining at the upper end of the trading range seen over the past two weeks. The upward trend channel is under threat, but a breakout has not yet been confirmed. A break below $84K would signal a victory for the bears, and a break below the recent local lows at $83K would confirm this with even greater certainty. In this scenario, the leading cryptocurrency could fall to $80K fairly quickly.  

News background

Strategy has been buying Bitcoin for the third week in a row, adding a further 334 BTC worth $29 million. The company now holds 848,000 BTC, purchased at an average price of $75.4K.

Peter Schiff, head of Euro Pacific Capital and a crypto-sceptic, acknowledged that Strategy's STRC preference shares have recovered to almost their par value of $100. However, he said that Strategy had lost its main channel for raising funds by selling STRC, which it had previously used to buy Bitcoin. Since May, Strategy has been financing its BTC purchases using MSTR ordinary shares.

Strive made its largest Bitcoin purchase since June and got closer to MARA, which ranks fourth in corporate BTC reserves. Last week, the company purchased a further 2,000 BTC for $169 million, bringing its reserves to 29,462 BTC.

BitMine purchased an additional 15,112 ETH last week, bringing the total amount of Ethereum in its reserves to 6.016 million ETH (4.93% of the total supply). To reach its target of purchasing 5% of the total ETH supply, the company needs to buy a further 85,000 ETH.

The queue for withdrawals from Ethereum staking has grown to a year-to-date high of 786,000 ETH (around 2% of the total locked supply). Withdrawals currently take over 13 days. Around 1.5 million ETH has accumulated in the deposit queue, with a waiting time of approximately 25 days. The rate at which validators can join and leave the Ethereum network is limited to avoid sudden changes in the network's security parameters.

Summary: The crypto market retreated by 0.7% to $2.91T amid a strong US dollar and a bond sell-off. Bitcoin is trading at $85.2K; a break below $84K would increase the risk of a decline towards $80K.