Proactive Investors - Bitcoin (BTC) scored a thumping 9.5% gain in the BTC/USDT pair on Wednesday to close at a six-month high of US$24,320.
Short liquidations shot upwards by US$155mln as the benchmark cryptocurrency smashed every resistance line on the order book and cruised safely past the 23k-24k channel.
BTC/USDT added more gains this morning, with the pair touching US$24,900 before getting knocked back to US$24,600.
So, what caused this strong rally?
Surprisingly solid retail sales in the US – jumping 3% in January against a 1.8% forecast – plus impressive industrial and manufacturing output sent a jolt through the risk-on markets.
Tech stocks were seen higher, encouraged by the very real possibility that we’ll avoid a recession.
UK equities certainly need to take some credit; the FTSE 100 index pushed to a new all-time high after breaking above 8,000 for the first time ever.
Bitcoin (BTC) shoots to a six-month high – Source: currency.com
Still, BTC, nay the crypto markets in general, have vastly outperformed the stock market in the past couple of days, with the exception of crypto-adjacent stocks.
Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) soared over 17%, Marathon Digital over 18% and Argo Blockchain on the London Stock Exchange is up a whopping 20%.
Worth noting is how this rally came just as US and UK regulators have been banging the drum on a widespread crackdown on everything from stablecoins and staking to bitcoin ATMs.
Perhaps this is the bulls saying: We see you, regulators, and we don’t care.
Bitcoin Ordinals has also pushed network activity – and congestion – higher, with the number of NFTs minted on the bitcoin blockchain exceeding 100,000.
Ethereum shot 7.5% higher yesterday and added another 0.5% this morning to touch US$1,712.
The pair was sent back to US$1,680 as buyers cash out, but not before taking some US$42mln in short liquidations with them.
Binance’s ETH/USDT order book shows resistance camps at US$1,700, US$1,750 and US$1,800. In other words, ether is finding it harder than bitcoin to carve out a sustained rally, as evidenced by the bearish ETH/BTC pair.
In the altcoin space
Bitcoin’s rally was broadly shared in the altcoin space, particularly with Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX), all of which added close to 10% overnight.
Ethereum scaling solution Optimism (OP) took the top spot though, adding nearly 20% to bring its market capitalisation above US$665mln.
Only Polkadot (DOT) and Binance’s BNB coin remain in the red week on week, the latter due to the regulatory crackdown of its BUSD stablecoin.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at US$1.11tn, having added over 8% overnight.
In the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, around 6% in total value locked (TVL) across all protocols was added overnight, bringing TVL above US$50 for the first time since before the FTX collapse in early November.
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