William Suberg
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped nearly $4,000 on Dec. 28 as the market offered a sharp reminder that the bull run would need to wait.
BTC analysts eyes $44,000
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting lows of $48,335 on Bitstamp at Dec. 28's Wall Street open.
The pair had passed $52,000 the previous day, this marking a three-week high, before pressure from sellers halted progress. At the time of writing, Bitcoin circled $49,000 as traders took the opportunity to remind audiences of Bitcoin's ongoing active range.
"Humans get bullish at resistance. It's a thing," Scott Melker summarized.
The $52,000 trip indeed failed to attack any of the price levels previously identified as turning points, notably $53,000 — Bitcoin's $1 trillion market cap mark. Popular trader Pentoshi meanwhile identified $44,000 as a potential floor should the downward trend accelerate. Slightly longer timeframes offered a similar outlook based on recent behavior.
Zooming out, however, there were bearish considerations on the horizon. William Clemente, lead insights analyst at Blockware, identified a potential repeat of behavior immediately after 2017's old all-time high, which led to an entire year of a bear market.
Yashu Gola
Ethereum is having difficulty keeping its richest investors in line as its native token, Ether (ETH), hints at logging more losses in the near term.
Blockchain data analytics service Glassnode revealed that the number of Ethereum addresses holding at least 1,000 ETH dropped to 6,292 this Monday, the lowest reading since April 2017. At its year-to-date peak, the numbers were 7,239 in January.
On-chain analysts typically observe ETH distributions among addresses to realize retail and institutional sentiments. They consider wallets that hold above 1,000 ETH (around $3.92 million at currency exchange rates) as “whales,” primarily for their ability to influence interim market trends via large sell and/or buy orders.
But as the numbers of these so-called whales drop, it reflects an ongoing selling trend among the richest Ethereum wallet owners. For instance, the number of Ethereum addresses that hold at least 10,000 ETH (or around $39.20 million) has also plunged, from 1,208 in June to 1,156 at the time of this writing, marking an almost 4.5% decline.
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
