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Bitcoin dipped below $ 50,000 again, and this mark transformed into a zone of strong resistance for the cryptocurrency. If the pressure on the spot exchanges remains strong over the weekend, the likelihood of a larger pullback will increase significantly.
Technical data signals persistence of the negative – at least in the short term. Whales send cryptocurrency to exchanges, so new sales can be expected in the near future.
The situation is indirectly aggravated by the Bank of Russia, which has recently significantly increased the frequency of negative statements about cryptocurrencies. The Russian regulator again opposed the recognition of bitcoin and virtual assets as legal means of payment.
Hackers are also on the alert. The Solana network (SOL) was attacked early this morning. A gratifying fact – in contrast to the September situation, the blockchain has retained its performance. Only productivity has decreased.
The ghost of a correction haunts the market
Many countries are introducing new restrictions amid potential threats from the next Covid strain. Everything that happens literally deprives traders of sleep. They go into cash en masse, as evidenced by the growth of the dollar index, the fall of bitcoin and other risky assets.
As you know, an inverse correlation is often observed between the cryptocurrency and the “American” – if bitcoin rises in price, the dollar weakens. Conversely, BTC starts counting losses when the “evergreen” rate strengthens.
We have been observing the implementation of the second scenario for several days. On Friday evening, bitcoin dipped to $ 48,648. Over the week, the capitalization of the first cryptocurrency decreased by 13.92% – to $ 935.161 billion (according to CoinMarketcap).
Following BTC, altcoins are weakening. Ether (ETH) fell to $ 4,073 (-4.14%). According to Glasnode, due to the fall in the value of the asset, the number of unprofitable Ethereum addresses has reached a monthly maximum.
XRP suffered the largest losses in the TOP-10, having fallen in price by more than 6% – to $ 0.8418. Binance Coin (BNB), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) all pulled back to $ 548, $ 178 and $ 1.30. The total value of all cryptocurrencies fell to $ 2.293 trillion.
Meanwhile, the SOPR indicator dropped to a 4-month low: hence, traders are now selling at a loss for themselves, expecting a deeper correction.
Alarms are captured by the CryptoQuant team. According to her, the largest bitcoin wallets send BTC to exchanges, so in the near future the dump may increase. In such a situation, another rollback looks inevitable, analysts warn.
Red light for bitcoin
A study by the Bank of Russia, dedicated to the analysis of the situation in the financial market and its prospects until 2024, once again confirmed the tough position of the regulator in relation to bitcoin. The Central Bank again spoke out against paying for goods and services with cryptocurrencies.
According to the regulator, BTC and other private coins are volatile tools that scammers and hackers regularly use. Such assets cannot be considered as full-fledged means of payment, since their use in transactions creates threats – both for the recipient of the goods or services and for the seller.
The Bank of Russia also paid attention to the CBDC concept. The regulator recalled the upcoming testing of the potential of the digital ruble. Tests of the platform on which the state token will be based will start in 2022 and will be held with the participation of banks and companies.
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation also plans to work out a mechanism for converting CBDC into foreign currency. Testing will take place without haste. The decision to issue a digital ruble will be made only on the basis of the results obtained during testing.
Solana withstood another blow by hackers
Solana’s network was hit by a DDoS attack in the early morning. Nevertheless, the blockchain remained operational, only performance decreased. The attack was recorded by GenesysGo. In her statement, it is noted that the morning series of hacker attacks overwhelmed the network. Solana was also attacked in September: then the network was disconnected for 17 hours due to spam activity of bots participating in the procedure for placing tokens of the Raydium decentralized platform deployed on SOL.
And while the December attack did not stop the blockchain, it caused delays in the processing of transactions, GenesysGo said in a statement. Solana developers have not yet commented on the incident.
And social media users are hoping that the latest hack will force the Solana Foundation to get serious about improving the security of the network’s software.
Sources: GenesysGo, Glassnode, IntoTheBlock, CoinMarketCap, CoinTelegraph, RBC
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