Decentral Block Post

The United States equities markets witnessed a sharp comeback last week, led by the Nasdaq Composite which gained 7.5%. The S&P was up about 6.5% for the week while the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed a gain of 5.4%.

Continuing its tight correlation with the equities market, the crypto markets are also attempting a relief rally. Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a modest recovery but some altcoins have risen sharply in the past week. This suggests that investors are taking advantage of the sharp fall in the price to accumulate altcoins at lower levels.

Smaller-sized investors have been using the decline in Bitcoin to build their position to at least one Bitcoin. Glassnode data shows that the number of Bitcoin wallet addresses having more than one Bitcoin rose by 873 between June 15 to June 25.

Could the recovery in Bitcoin and altcoins pick up momentum? Let’s study the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that could charge higher in the short term.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin’s relief rally is facing stiff resistance near $22,000 as seen from the long wick on the June 26 candlestick. This indicates that the bears are not willing to give up their advantage and are selling on rallies.

Bitcoin (BTC) focused on $21,000 into the weekend amid warnings that volatility could still consume the market before Monday.

S&P 500 sees second best week of 2022

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD broadly higher in its recent trading range after U.S. stocks ended the week strong.

As noted by markets commentators Holger Zschaepitz, the S&P 500 sealed its second best week of 2022, indicative of modest relief across risk assets.

Bitcoin was on track to log slights gains at its weekly close, the first weekly green candle — albeit small — since May.

Before then, however, anything could happens, according to on-chain analytics resource Material Indicators (MI).

Austrian crypto and stock trading platform Bitpanda joins the growing list of companies to announce a mass layoff as it aims to “get out of it financially healthy” amid an unforgiving bear market.

Over the past several weeks, the bear market resulted in numerous catastrophic outcomes for many ecosystems such as Terra’s (LUNA) and Abracadabra’s Magic Internet Money (MIM) de-pegging fiasco. Witnessing the crashes from a front-row seat, Bitpanda made the “tough decision” of cutting down its employee headcount to roughly 730 people.

While the exact number of employees intimated to stop working for Bitpanda remains undisclosed, data from LinkedIn indicates that the company is in the process of laying off approximately 277 full-time and part-time employees.

In the announcement, named ‘The Way Forward,’ Bitpanda supported the move to cut down employees by highlighting the need to be “robustly well-capitalized” amid uncertain market conditions, stating:

“It is a tough, but necessary decision and we are confident that the new organizational design will help us be more focused, effective and stronger as a company.”

The United States equity markets and the cryptocurrency space are witnessing a relief rally this week. Supporting the rise in risky assets is the U.S. dollar index (DXY), which retreated from its multi-year high. Generally, cryptocurrencies move inverse to the price of the U.S. dollar, but this week's bounce does not necessarily mean that bulls' grip over the market has come to an end.

Citing on-chain data, CryptoQuant senior analyst Julio Moreno, said that Bitcoin (BTC) miners may have already capitulated. Historical data suggests that miner capitulation usually precedes market bottoms.

Another on-chain metric that indicates that Bitcoin’s price may have reached an attractive level is the Mayer Multiple. The metric is calculated by dividing the price of Bitcoin by the 200-day moving average value. It points to whether Bitcoin is overbought, undervalued or fairly priced. On June 22, the indicator's reading was 0.5 and according to crypto entrepreneur Kyle Chasse, Bitcoin’s price has dipped below this reading only on 3% of all trading days.

Several on-chain indicators are suggesting that Bitcoin may be close to a bottom. Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out what the technicals suggest!

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin is attempting a recovery in a downtrend but the bulls are struggling to push the price to the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level of $23,024. This suggests that demand dries up at higher levels.

Bitcoin (BTC) headed toward the upper end of its trading range on June 24 as optimism crept back into traders’ forecasts.

Bitcoin price "ready for $23,000"

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked a broadly stable BTC/USD as it hit local highs of $21,425 on Bitstamp.

The pair had shifted higher since wicking below the $20,000 on June 22, with United States equities similarly cool going into the weekend.

“Bitcoin ready for $23,000,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe announced to Twitter followers on the day.

At just above the crucial 200-week moving average (WMA), $23,000 formed a popular upside target for commentators — and sellers.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) do not pose any direct threat to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) but are still associated with risks in relation to stablecoins, one industry executive believes.

According to Mikkel Morch, executive director at the digital asset hedge fund ARK36, a state-backed digital currency like the U.S. dollar doesn’t necessarily have to be a competitor to a private or a decentralized cryptocurrency.

That’s because the use cases and value proposition of the decentralized digital assets “often go beyond the realm of simple transactions,” Morch said in a statement to Cointelegraph on Thursday.

The exec referred to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell who earlier this year hinted that the United States government would not stop a “well regulated, privately issued stablecoin” from coexisting with a potential Fed digital dollar.

As such, active commitment to the CBDC development does not mean that other countries like Singapore are unfriendly to non-state-backed cryptocurrencies, Morch said. The executive suggested that a CBDC roll-out may even “facilitate the proliferation of non-sovereign cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.”

XRP's ongoing upside retracement risks exhaustion as its price tests a resistance level with a history of triggering a 65% price crash.

XRP price rebounds 30%

 XRP's price gained nearly 30%, rising to $0.36 on June 24, four days after rebounding from $0.28, its lowest level since January 2021.

The token's retracement rally could extend to $0.41 next, according to its "cup-and-handle" pattern shown in the chart below.

Interestingly, the indicator's profit target is the same as XRP's 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave).

Major resistance hurdle

The cup-and-handle bullish reversal setup tends to meet its profit target at a 61% success rate, according to veteran analyst Thomas Bulkowski. 

The Horizon Bridge to the Harmony One layer-1 blockchain has been exploited for $100 million in altcoins which are being swapped for Ether (ETH).

The hack may vindicate previously raised community concerns about the robustness of the two of four multisig that reportedly secures the bridge.

Starting at about 7:08 am until 7:26 am ET, 11 transactions were made from the bridge for various tokens. They have since begun sending tokens to a different wallet to swap for ETH on the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX), then sending the ETH back to the original wallet.

So far, Frax (FRAX), Wrapped Ether (WETH). Aave (AAVE), Sushi (SUSHI), Frax Share (FXS), AAG (AAG), Binance USD (BUSD). Dai (DAI), Tether (USDT), Wrapped BTC (WBTC), and USD Coin (USDC) have been stolen from the bridge through this exploit.

The Horizon Bridge facilitates token transfers between Harmony and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain and Bitcoin. Harmony, the operator of the bridge, announced late on June 23 that the bridge has been halted. It said the BTC bridge and its assets have not been affected by the attack.

Polygon (MATIC) took a break from its prevailing bearish course, posting one of sharpest rebound in the crypto market this week.

Notably, MATIC's price has risen to $0.50 this June 23, four days after hitting $0.317, its lowest level since April 2021. This amounts to roughly a 60% gain, surpassing the performances of even Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in the same timeframe. 

Nevertheless, MATIC is still down significantly from its December 2021 high of $2.92, coinciding with the overall crypto bear market and a hawkish Fed putting pressure on risk-on assets. 

MATIC "in a pretty big accumulation"

Meanwhile, some of its richest investors have been accumulating MATIC tokens despite the general downtrend, on-chain data suggests.

Notably, the so-called MATIC sharks and whales have been in accumulation, according to data provided by Santiment. That includes the tiers of Polygon token holders ranging from 10,000 to 10 million coins, which have "collectively added 8.7% more to their bags" since May 9.

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to face a tough battle near the psychological level of $20,000 as the bulls and the bears attempt to assert their supremacy. Trading firm QCP Capital said in their latest market circular that funding rates on derivatives markets were stable and bearish conditions were fading.

Another ray of hope for the Bitcoin bulls is that Bitcoin miners may be capitulating as the recent decline in the price has made some mining machines unprofitable. Data from Arcane Research shows that public Bitcoin mining companies that had only sold 30% of their mined production from January to April of this year had dumped 100% of their Bitcoin production in May. Some analysts believe that miners giving up was a bullish signal.

However, one metric suggests that Bitcoin may not have bottomed out. Historically, Bitcoin signals a bottom when less than 50% of the Bitcoin addresses remain profitable. Glassnode data as of June 20 shows that 56.2% of Bitcoin addresses are in profit, increasing concerns of another down leg.

Could Bitcoin and the altcoins sustain the recovery or will bears pull the price lower? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

The bulls are attempting to start a recovery in Bitcoin but the long wick on the June 21 candlestick suggests that bears are not willing to surrender their advantage.

Major stablecoin company Tether is expanding its stablecoin offering with a new cryptocurrency pegged to the British pound sterling (GBP).

Tether officially announced on Wednesday that its upcoming GBP-pegged stablecoin, GBPT, will launch in early July and will initially be supported by the Ethereum blockchain.

GBPT will be a stable digital currency pegged on the 1:1 ratio to the GBPT, aiming to provide a faster and cheaper option for asset transfers.

GBPT joins a family of four other fiat currency-pegged Tether (USDT) tokens, including the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, USDT. Other stablecoins include the euro-pegged EURT, the offshore Chinese yuan-egged CNHT as well as the recently launched MXNT, the Mexican peso-pegged stablecoin.

According to the announcement, GBPT will be built by the team of developers behind Tether USDT and operate under its main website, Tether.to:

Avalanche (AVAX) is down 45% in 30 days and in the same time the cryptocurrencies total market capitalization shrank by 29%.

Despite the recent downturn, this decentralized application (DApp) platform remains a top contender in the layer-1 and layer-2 race and it ranks high in terms of smart contract deposits and active addresses. Yet, the lackluster token price is still causing investors to rethink whether the network remains a “serious” competitor.

The brutal sell-off on risk assets caused AVAX to test the $14.80 support multiple times, while the current market capitalization stands at $4.8 billion. It’s important also to note that the network’s total value locked (TVL) holds an impressive $3.2 billion.

As a comparison, Solana (SOL) offers incredibly low network fees and holds a $2.1 billion TVL. Yet, SOL token’s market cap stands at $12.9 billion, which is almost three times larger than Avalanche’s valuation at the $14.80 price level.

The TVL indicator is extremely relevant because it measures the deposits on the network’s smart contracts. If we use Polygon (MATIC), an Ethereum layer-2 solution, as a proxy, the network holds a $1.8 billion TVL while the token's market capitalization stands at $3.5 billion.

Noma, a Japanese film studio, has announced that it is producing three feature films that are based on the world of cryptocurrencies. The first film, titled The Rhetoric Star, is already in production and will be released in 2024. 

In an announcement sent to Cointelegraph on Tuesday, Taichi Ito, the founder of Noma and a producer of the series, said that the trilogy aims to impart knowledge about the crypto industry through creative storytelling. Additionally, Ito proudly shared that their team is working with Bitcoin (BTC) experts and the award-winning sound designer Sefi Carmel. He also expressed confidence that The Rhetoric Star will “change the way” audiences learn about crypto.

The film series is also produced by Mai Fujimoto, the CEO of Tokyo-based blockchain firm Gracone, and Ryo Nakatsuji, an executive at Japanese publisher CoinPost. Meanwhile, Japanese animator Haruna Gohzu, who has worked in popular anime like Pokémon, Fairy Tail and Demon Slayer will be taking the lead in the films’ animations.

Sefi Carmel, who is designing the sounds for the films, mentioned that the team wants to create a series that relays insights from the world’s crypto experts to the masses in a “creative and accessible” way. He said that he’s honored to join the team and excited as the world steers towards “a virtual future dependent on blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs and the like.”

Related: Japanese business giant Nomura to explore crypto and NFTs with new unit