Bitcoin is up over $500 on a four-hour basis after testing lower supports near $44,000 during Asia’s late morning trading hours.
The rebound from 24-hour lows of $44,248 follows a period of profit-taking, seen Tuesday, on the back of short-term fatigue, as CoinDesk reported. Bitcoin is currently changing hands for around $45,000 and is down 2.9% from a 24-hour high of $47,157, CoinDesk data shows.
Bitcoin continues to cool upon multiple attempts at the $50,000 price tag, evoking moments of price action gone by, though that may be less of a concern now given demand from bigger players, according to some.
“In comparison to the bull runs in 2017 and 2018, the current movement takes a more mature trend,” said Cynthia Wu, head of sales at Singapore-based digital asset services firm Matrixport. “The market landscape has become much more institutionalized – where now you have proprietary traders in crypto hedge funds, crypto-offerings from foreign exchange brokers and institutions … that are transacting on an institutional scale.”
The ongoing price trend for bitcoin and the fusion of retail and institutional interest are a sign that the search for yield by investors, big or small, has extended into crypto and “will be around for good,” Wu added.
Bitcoin’s daily price action remains relatively flat with the weight of the previously discussed 200-day moving average bearing down on prices near $45,500, a sign a further sell pressure could be lurking around the corner.
Though the altcoin market continues to hold firm with most in the top 20 by market cap remaining in the green when viewing over a seven-day period.
“Overall, the markets have seen a positive trend continue this week; altcoins are up while bitcoin has coasted flat,” said Byron Goldberg, Australian country manager at crypto exchange Luno. “Interestingly, we are seeing ether slightly outperform bitcoin week-on-week.”
Over a 30-day period, ether is up 67.6% compared to bitcoin’s 46.3% over the same period, Messari data shows.
Goldberg points to Ethereum’s London hard fork as the likely catalyst for driving prices higher on the world’s second-largest crypto by market capitalization.
Indeed, futures premium on ether stands at 7.36% to bitcoin’s meagre 2.8%, meaning the crypto markets are likely anticipating ether to rise further than bitcoin over the next three months with a shift in institutional interest, Goldberg added.
All major cryptos in the top 20 posted results in the red over a 24-hour period by press time, with dogecoin having shed the most while uniswap, and chainlink followed close behind.