The crypto market is holding just below a key level

Market overview

The crypto market has lost 1.4%, falling back to $2.72T, closer to the lower boundary of the narrow consolidation range seen over the last few days. Stock indices are falling after Monday’s impressive rally, which is holding back cryptocurrency speculators. This indecision is fuelling the bears, as the upward-trending 50-day moving average continues to diverge from the current market capitalisation level. This is a rather worrying scenario, marking a shift from the confident bull market of August and September towards a sideways trend or even a correction, similar to what was seen for much of July and August. Meanwhile, altcoins are showing mixed movements. Basic Attention Token (+11.3%) and Theta (+3.9%) are once again the top performers, with Polkadot (+2.7%) also in the top three. Near Protocol (−6.7%), Uniswap (−3%) and Avalanche (−2.8%) are falling the most. The ratio of gainers to losers is approximately 1:4.

Bitcoin has lost around 1% over the past 24 hours, falling to $81.5K. Unlike the wider market, the leading cryptocurrency is holding above its 50-day MA. At the current level, BTC has returned to the high point of its early September rally, which was followed by a correction. This correction fitted neatly into a Fibonacci correction pattern. Still, the subsequent upward momentum was half as strong as technical analysis would suggest, whilst the October decline raised even more questions about the sustainability of the bull market. 

News background

Investors who bought Bitcoin at high levels have largely stopped selling. However, new buyers are still needed for the price to move higher, and they have not yet appeared, according to CryptoQuant.

Strategy has been buying Bitcoin for the fifth week in a row, adding 267 BTC at an average price of $82.9K per coin. The company now holds 848,517 BTC at an average price of $75.4K per Bitcoin.

Strive made the largest Bitcoin purchase of the year, adding 4,045 BTC last week and bringing its Bitcoin reserves to 36,818 BTC. Strive has taken fourth place among public companies by Bitcoin reserves, overtaking MARA.

According to Lookonchain, the mining company MARA Holdings has transferred 1,000 BTC to crypto exchanges over the past five days. The movement of funds may indicate preparations for a sale, but the actual sale of the coins has not yet been confirmed. In the first quarter, MARA sold 20,880 BTC.

Last week, BitMine purchased an additional 12,535 ETH, bringing the total amount of Ethereum in its reserves to 6.04 million ETH (4.95% of the total supply).

As a result of the latest difficulty adjustment, the mining difficulty for the leading cryptocurrency rose by 5.92%, reaching a seven-month high. Bitcoin miners’ activity has risen by almost 30% over the past month, even as some of their capacity has been redirected to support AI this year.