Bitcoin and Ethereum stumble, liquidations soar as crypto market rally hits wall

Bitcoin (BTC) posted worrying bearish signals overnight, with the BTC/USDT pair heading below US$23,000 after the biggest daily decline in six weeks.

Nearly US$40 million in long bitcoin liquidations have accumulated over the past 24 hours as volatility plagued the market ahead of the trio of interest rate announcements from the US, UK UK and EU within two days.

Binance’s order book shows strong walls of resistance at $23,500 and $24,000 and support at $22,700, approximately 0.65% below the prevailing market price of $22,850.

Bitcoin (BTC) stumbles – Source: currency.com

If the Federal Reserve does what markets expect and signals a slowdown in interest rate hikes, it should theoretically encourage a rally in risk assets, but there appear to be other catalysts in play right now.

A controversial new protocol called Ordinals has just been released, allowing users to store NFTs on the bitcoin blockchain by leveraging a recent protocol upgrade to ledger.

Bitcoin maximalists not only fear that it will drive up transaction fees on the network; they also believe it goes against the fundamentals of bitcoin itself.

Ethereum (ETH) joined bitcoin with a 5% drop to $1,570 against the US dollar overnight, with Binance’s order book showing support for the ETH/USDT pair at $1,500.

In the altcoin space

CoinDesk’s Market Weighted Market Index (CMI) posted a -1.48% return overnight, with some of the heaviest losses among major altcoins coming from Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT) and Avalanche (AMAX).

Privacy coin Monero (XMR) saw more than 5% losses.

As for the top risers of the day, the Threshold (T) blockchain jumped almost 20% following an upgrade to its bitcoin-ether bridge. The market capitalization of T now stands at US$426 million, making it the 85th largest cryptocurrency in the world.

Dogecoin (DOGE) also beats the market with a 6.5% gain overnight. The meme coin is benefiting from renewed speculation about an integration with Twitter, the social media platform run by Elon Muck.

The global cryptocurrency market cap currently stands at US$1.04 billion, while the total value locked across all decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols is US$47.3 billion.