Decentral Block Post

Risky assets marginally extend their up-move in April. The S&P 500 Index rose around 1.5% in April while Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to end the month with gains of more than 4%. Could the rally continue in May or is it time for a pullback?

The recovery could face headwinds if the United States banking woes escalate further. JPMorgan Asset Management chief investment officer Bob Michele said in an interview with Bloomberg that the turmoil at First Republic Bank is unlikely to be limited to the bank only, and could cause a domino effect.

If that happens, then the U.S. equity markets may witness a correction. However, it is difficult to predict how Bitcoin will react to such a crisis because, in the past few days, BTC price rose while legacy banking troubles deepened. But in case of a major upheaval in the U.S. banking sector, it is possible that Bitcoin will also face a correction sooner or later.

In the near term, Bitcoin and select altcoins are showing strength. Let’s study the charts of five cryptocurrencies that may outperform over the next few days.

Bitcoin price analysis

After two days of low volatile trading in Bitcoin, the bulls are trying to assert their supremacy on April 30.

It now costs Bitcoin (BTC) miners at least $17,000 to produce one BTC in the U.S. versus the $5,000-10,000 range a year ago, according to Bitcoin mining data resource Hashrate Index and Luxor.

Bitcoin hashprice has dropped 58% in a year

Unsurprisingly, soaring electricity rates across the U.S. states have contributed to rising Bitcoin mining costs.

Notably, between January 2022 and January 2023, the commercial electricity tariff surged at an average of 10.71% per U.S. state, higher than the average consumer price index surge of 6.4%.

Coupled with Bitcoin's downward performance in 2022, which saw a maximum drawdown from around $48,000 to below $15,000, it is evident that active miners generated consistent losses due to the increase in operational costs and lower returns.

But this changed in Q1 of this year as the miners' hashprice, or the USD price per tera-hash per second per day (TH/s/d), rose 31% thanks to Bitcoin's price recovery toward $30,000.

Bitcoin (BTC) narrowed volatility on April 30 as the weekly and monthly candle closes loomed.

Trader sees BTC price upside capped at $32,500

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked BTC/USD as it loitered just above $29,000 throughout the weekend.

After unsettled price action earlier in the week, Bitcoin returned to sideways trading, with markets witnessing an eerie calm despite the potential for volatility thanks to lower weekend liquidity.

As such, traders were hopeful that no unwelcome surprises would greet the candle closes.

“Nothing has changed,” popular trader Elizy summarized in part of a recent Twitter analysis of the three-day chart.

Prominent YouTuber DidYouKnowGaming was able to regain access to his YouTube channel, which an anonymous bad actor hacked to promote XRP (XRP) cryptocurrency scams.

While hacking into YouTube channels to promote scams has been a long-standing method of targeting unwary investors, the number of creators on the platform reporting hacks has increased. Most recently, DidYouKnowGaming — a YouTuber with 2.4 million subscribers — warned his Twitter followers about a hack.

After gaining access to the account, the hacker changed the YouTuber’s profile and cover images to Ripple’s logo, as shown below.

YouTube’s swift intervention ensured damage control by preventing XRP hackers from interacting with the channel’s subscribers. Recently, one of the largest YouTube creators, Linus Tech Tips, also reported losing access to his channels.

While the exploit used by the hackers to gain access to YouTube accounts remains a mystery, the victim YouTubers have always been able to recover their accounts and deleted videos, if any.