Market Wrap: Bitcoin Fails to Break $15.9K; Over 50K ETH Staked on Eth 2.0 Contract

Bitcoin gained Wednesday while Ethereum 2.0 staking has been ramping up.

Bitcoin’s price was back on a bullish run Wednesday, heading as high as $15,973 around 18:00 UTC (2 p.m. ET) before slipping somewhat, at $15,694 as of press time. 

Constantin Kogan, managing partner at investment firm Wave Financial, sees an upside signal in the Power of Balance indicator, which uses opening, closing, high and low daily pricing to determine market movements. “The Power of Balance indicator signals in favor of an upward breakout, most likely a test of $16,000,” Kogan said. 

Analysts seem to have found a short-term price floor, the area where order books will trigger buying, pushing the price back above that level if it does go that low. 

“We’ve been ranging between $14,600 to $16,000 since Nov. 5. Bitcoin seems to have found a local floor at the $15,000 price,” Andrew Tu, an executive at quant trading firm Efficient Frontier, told CoinDesk.

David Lifchitz, chief investment officer of ExoAlpha, echoed a similar assessment. “In the very short term, we may see some consolidation of the bitcoin price around $15,000, which would be healthy after the last powerful breakout, before grinding higher toward $20,000.”

“As BTC consolidates and more bullish fundamental news comes out for both bitcoin, like [Stanley] Druckenmiller coming out as an investor in BTC, and the general market, like the [Pfizer coronavirus] vaccine, it may provide the risk-on impetus to break above resistance at $16,000,” Tu added. 

The market hailed the potential for coronavirus vaccinations being deployed over the next several months. That has pushed up global equities since Monday and major indexes were positive on Wednesday.

Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 has been trending down this week, with Tuesday continuing Monday’s drop in the relationship of their price movements.

For Efficient Frontier’s Tu, some fundamental aspects that would cause traditional markets to dump may simultaneously pump bitcoin. “[U.S. President] Trump’s posturing around the election result and the multiple lawsuits and recounts coming from his administration may provide enough political instability to cause BTC to bid upwards.”

Ether in ETH 2.0 surpasses 50K

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Tuesday, trading around $465 and climbing 3.5% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

The amount of ether that has been staked in Ethereum’s 2.0 upgrade smart contract passed 50,000 ETH Tuesday. It’s at 50,977 ETH, according to data aggregator Glassnode, and is worth over $23 million as of press time.

The Ethereum 2.0 contract launched Nov. 3. Users must stake at least 32 ETH in the contract in order to participate in the network upgrade, which is expected to enhance its security and scalability while maintaining the transaction history and functionality of existing ether balance. 

Ben Chan, vice president of engineering at oracle provider Chainlink, told CoinDesk he is bullish on ETH 2.0 prospects but that more scaffolding still needs to be built for ETH 2.0 developers. “I think it needs more community support, more tooling and turnkey staking solutions,” Chan said.

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mixed Wednesday. Notable losers as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

Notable losers:

Commodities:

Treasurys: