Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week with consolidation in the air amid some of the least volatile conditions ever.

Despite losing 5% in an hour last week, Bitcoin’s subsequent lack of volatility is on every trader’s mind.

The question is whether that will change in the coming days.

There are plenty of potential catalysts, from macroeconomic data to exchange setups and more, but which will win out — and in which direction it will send BTC price — remains to be seen.

Behind the scenes, it remains business as usual for Bitcoin network fundamentals, with miners preserving their newfound buoyancy and ready for new all-time highs in difficulty.

Digital asset investment firms poured $2.7 billion into decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in 2022, up 190% from 2021 as investments into centralized finance (CeFi) projects went the other way — falling 73% to $4.3 billion over the same timeframe.

The staggering rise in DeFi funding was despite overall crypto funding figures falling from $31.92 billion in 2021 to $18.25 billion in 2022 as the market shifted from bull to bear.

According to a Mar. 1 report from CoinGecko, citing data from DeFiLlama, the figures “potentially points to DeFi as the new high growth area for the crypto industry.” It notes that the decrease in funding towards CeFi could point to the sector “reaching a degree of saturation.”

The near three-fold increase in DeFi investment is also a staggering 65-fold increase from 2020, at the start of the last bull run.

According to CoinGecko, the largest DeFi funding in 2022 came from Luna Foundation Guard’s (LFG) $1 billion sale of LUNA tokens in February 2022, which came about three months before the catastrophic collapse of Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) and TerraClassicUSD (USTC) in May.

American rapper and actor Snoop Dogg has been revealed as one of the co-founders of a Web3-powered live streaming app called “Shiller" — adding to yet another Web3 partnership fothe well-known hip-hop artist. 

The app is described as a “live broadcast platform” that aims to combine Web3 technology with real-time live-streaming content. The rap star has been named as a co-founder of the app, along with technology entrepreneur Sam Jones.

It follows a wave of Web3 partnerships by Snoop Dogg in the last year.

In April last year, Snoop Dogg partnered with Sandbox metaverse to launch an NFT collection called “Snoop Avatars” and released a hip-hop single titled “A Hard Working Man,” which was later accompanied by a 50,000-piece NFT drop.

The rap star also partnered with Yuga Labs — the team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks — to perform on a metaverse-transformed stage at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Aug. 29.

The United States equities markets made a strong recovery this week but Bitcoin (BTC) failed to follow suit. This means that cryptocurrency investors stayed away and could be worried by the ongoing problems at Silvergate bank. These fears could be what is behind the total crypto market capitalization dropping to nearly $1 trillion.

The behavior analytics platform Santiment said in a report on March 5 that there was a “huge spike of bearish sentiment” according to their bullish versus bearish word comparison Social Trends chart. However, the firm added that th “kind of overwhelmingly bearish sentiment can lead to a nice bounce to silence the critics.”

Another short-term positive for the crypto markets is the weakness in the U.S. dollar index (DXY), which fell by 0.70 in the past 7 days. This suggests that crypto markets may attempt a recovery over the next few days. As long as Bitcoin remains above $20,000, select altcoins may outperform the broader markets.

Let’s study the charts of Bitcoin and the four altcoins that are showing promise in the near term.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plummeted below the $22,800 support on March 3. Buyers tried to push the price back above the breakdown level on March 5 but the long wick on the candlestick suggests that bears are trying to flip $22,800 into resistance.

The United States equities markets made a strong recovery this week but Bitcoin (BTC) failed to follow suit. This means that cryptocurrency investors stayed away and could be worried by the ongoing problems at Silvergate bank. These fears could be what is behind the total crypto market capitalization dropping to nearly $1 trillion.

The behavior analytics platform Santiment said in a report on March 5 that there was a “huge spike of bearish sentiment,” according to their bullish versus bearish word comparison Social Trends chart. However, the firm added that the “kind of overwhelmingly bearish sentiment can lead to a nice bounce to silence the critics.”

Another short-term positive for the crypto markets is the weakness in the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which fell by 0.70 in the past 7 days. This suggests that crypto markets may attempt a recovery over the next few days. As long as Bitcoin remains above $20,000, select altcoins may outperform the broader markets.

Let’s study the charts of Bitcoin and the four altcoins that are showing promise in the near term.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plummeted below the $22,800 support on March 3. Buyers tried to push the price back above the breakdown level on March 5 but the long wick on the candlestick suggests that bears are trying to flip $22,800 into resistance.