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Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated into the weekend as market participants stayed optimistic about further gains.

“Most still sitting on the sidelines” with Bitcoin

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hovering near $30,500 on April 15.

The pair had finished the Wall Street trading week on a less volatile note, along with fairly flat United States equities.

With the 10-month highs of $31,035 remaining in force, traders and analysts considered the options for how BTC price action could play out next.

“We’re going higher. Much higher,” Credible Crypto summarized, retweeting a chart of BTC/USD and funding rates from popular technical analyst Murfski.

Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied over 10% between April 9 and April 14, marking the highest daily close in more than ten months. While some analysts may argue the move justifies a degree of decoupling from traditional markets, both the S&P 500 and gold are near their highest levels in over six months.

Bitcoin price breaks $30,000 despite macro headwinds 

Bitcoin’s gains and rally above $30,000 also happened while the dollar strength index (DYX), which measures the U.S. currency against a basket of foreign exchanges, reached its lowest level in 12 months.

The indicator fell to 100.8 on April 14 from 104.7 one month prior as investors priced in higher odds of further liquidity injections by the Federal Reserve.

Related: Bitcoin price teases $30K breakdown ahead of US CPI, FOMC minutes

The latest Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting minutes, released on April 12, made explicit reference to the anticipation of a “mild recession” later in 2023 due to the banking crisis. Even if inflation is no longer a primary concern, the monetary authority has little room to raise interest rates further without escalating an economic crisis.

Ethereum’s long-anticipated Shanghai and Capella upgrade was activated on April 12 and the total withdrawals in the first 40 hours after the Shapella upgrade stood at 142,425 ETH, per Nansen data. This falls in line with previous estimates. 

For a brief moment on April 12, when Shapella was activated, the deposits to ETH staking contracts outpaced withdrawals. However, deposits have slowed down come April 13 while the withdrawals are going strong.

ETH moved for withdrawals

The validators are required to update their staking software clients with withdrawal credentials changed to 0x01 from 0x00 and point to a valid Ethereum address. Once validators do that, the partial withdrawals, i.e. the withdrawals of rewards above 32 ETH, will be processed automatically.

Over 70.1% of validators have changed to 0x01, with 407,851.20 worth over $850 million set for withdrawal.

Additionally, 875,325 ETH worth $1.85 billion are waiting for full exit. Adding to the amount already processed in the first 40 hours, over 1.42 million ETH will be withdrawn from the staking contract.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved new 10-month highs at the April 14 Wall Street open as analysts kept hoping for further gains.

$31,000 revealed as make-or-break trend line

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD consolidating around $30,700 after spiking past the $31,000 mark.

The pair saw no major retracement as it headed further into grounds it originally lost in June 2022.

Now, market participants eyed the potential for bulls to capitalize on existing momentum with the help of positive macro trends.

United States equities opened higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index both up 0.3% at the time of writing.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has grown by more than 50% since Tesla unveiled its approximately $1 billion BTC sales in July 2022. In other words, the Elon Musk-owned electric carmaker would have made an additional $500 million if it had waited until today to sell. 

Are Tesla's Bitcoin trades profitable? 

Tesla infamously dumped nearly $936 million of its total Bitcoin holdings in Q2/2022, accounting for 75% of its remaining reserves, to secure a $64 million profit. At the time, Bitcoin was trading about 70% lower than its record high of $69,000 in November 2021.

Originally, Tesla purchased $1.50 billion worth of Bitcoin in February 2021 at an average price of $36,000. The company then sold BTC worth $272 million to boost its Q1/2021 accounting by $101 million.

The company has nevertheless held on to its remaining BTC as of Q4 2022 despite the price of Bitcoin sitting at bear-market lows of around $16,000 at the time. Today, Tesla holds 10,725 BTC worth around $330 million, almost 15% below the procurement value from February 2021.

Overall, Tesla made roughly $165 million in profit from two separate Bitcoin sales. As of April 14, it sits atop an unrealized loss of around $56.6 million on its remaining BTC holdings. While its net profit to date sits at around $108 million. 

Bitcoin (BTC) broke through $31,000 on April 14 as bulls hoped altcoins would soon follow.

Analyst eyes potential dip under $30,000 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView captured new 10-month highs of $31,035 for BTC/USD on Bitstamp.

The pair had risen gradually the day before after a consolidatory period around new macroeconomic data prints from the United States.

These had furthered the bullish risk asset narrative, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Inflation (PPI) prints showing inflation slowing faster than expected.

While Bitcoin did not react immediately, the latest uptick reinforced market participants’ convictions over continued strength and a break with the long-term downtrend.

Bitcoin (BTC) price maintained the $30,000 support as lower-than-expected U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data was released on April 12. The official inflation rate for March increased 5% year on year, which was slightly less than the 5.1% consensus. It was the lowest reading since May 2021 but is still significantly higher than the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

The data suggests that inflation is no longer the driving force behind Bitcoin’s rally, and investors’ focus has shifted from the impact of inflationary pressure to potential recession risks after the banking crisis revealed how fragile the financial system was following the Federal Reserve’s 12-month hike in interest rates from 0.10% to 4.85%.

Aside from the Silicon Valley Bank bankruptcy and the government-backed sale of Credit Suisse to UBS, several warning signs of a macroeconomic downturn have emerged.

The most recent ISM Purchasing Managers Index data fell to its lowest level since May 2020, indicating an economic contraction. According to Federal Reserve documents released on April 12, the aftermath of the U.S. banking crisis is likely to push the economy into a “mild recession” later this year. Because of the crisis, some have speculated that the Fed will hold off on raising interest rates, but officials affirmed that more effort is needed to keep inflation under control.

According to a Moody's Analytics report, commercial real estate prices fell 1.6% in February, the most since the 2008 financial crisis. Furthermore, the national office vacancy rate reached 16.5%, indicating the severity of the economic difficulties that businesses are currently facing.

Arbitrum’s ARB token has emerged as one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies following Ethereum’s long-awaited Shanghai upgrade.

Notably, ARB price gained 4.28% to hit $1.36 on April 13, its highest level in two weeks. This also amounts to 18% gains from its $1.15 low a day prior when the Shanghai upgrade enabled staking withdrawals on Ethereum.

To summarize, Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer-2 (L2) scaling solution that aims to reduce network transaction congestion and transaction fees. As a result, the market typically perceives Ethereum’s growth as a boon for L2 chains.

Here are three reasons why ARB could continue its bull run in Q2 to retest its record high of $1.60.

More utility for ARB

Arbitrum generated $2.5 million in profits in March 2023 via sequencing, according to Messari.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved $30,000 support at the April 12 Wall Street open as more United States macroeconomic data boosted bulls.

PPI hints further inflation drops to come

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hovering near $30,250 on Bitstamp.

Amid a slowdown in volatility, U.S. Producer Price Inflation (PPI) data provided a timely hint that inflation was slowing faster than expected.

Headline PPI came in at 2.7% year-on-year versus market expectations of 3% — an encouraging result for risk assets.

Financial commentary resource The Kobeissi Letter was among those noting that the month-on-month drop in PPI values was the largest since the peak in March 2022.

The price of Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) token edged toward $2,000 a day after the launch of the network’s long-anticipated Shapella upgrade.

Ethereum ducks sell-the-news fears

On April 13, Ether’s price gained roughly 4% to reach an intraday high of $1,996 on Coinbase, ignoring the potential sell-off pressure the Shapella upgrade could potentially bring to the market.

To recap: The Shanghai hard fork, also known as “Shapella,” enables users to withdraw their ETH from Ethereum’s proof-of-stake smart contract.

As of 9:00 am UTC on April 13, over 98,000 ETH worth around $194.8 million has left Ethereum’s voting balance reserves since the Shanghai launch a day ago, according to Nansen. In other words, nearly $200 million in potential selling pressure has entered the market.

But Ether’s price rise since Shanghai suggests that the market has had no problem absorbing any selling pressure arising from this event so far. It’s also possible that most users have decided to hold onto their ETH staking rewards rather than sell them in anticipation of further gains.

Bitcoin (BTC) price action is right on track when it comes to sealing new all-time highs, new data suggests.

A suite of price metrics from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode released on April 11 hints that Bitcoin’s current halving cycle is playing out in classic style.

BTC price closely resembles prior halving cycles

With BTC/USD up over 70% in 2023 and far from its $15,600 lows in November 2022, analysts are already considering the role of next year’s block subsidy halving.

Set to cut the amount of BTC miners “mint” per block from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC; the upcoming halving represents an emission decrease exactly like others that preceded it.

Bets are therefore increasing over the impact on Bitcoin price performance, likewise copying past halvings, with the event itself acting as a springboard for all-time highs.

The Ethereum network’s planned Shanghai hard fork is nearly here. Planned for April 12, this is the first major upgrade since The Merge in September 2022. The “Shapella” upgrade (a combination of the two major proposals Shanghai and Capella), includes EIP-4895 which enables validators to withdraw staked ETH from the Beacon chain (Consensus layer) to the EVM (execution layer). The execution layer is the fun and friendly Ethereum users have come to know and love. 

Why is this a big deal? With just over 18 million ETH currently staked (valued at just over $33 billion at the time of writing), some of which has been locked up for years, the possibility of these tokens flooding an already teetering market is enough to get some holders ready to sell the news once withdrawals are enabled.

For holders who are both long and short ETH post-withdrawals, it’s likely to be a significant event, and on-chain activity suggests many feel the same: activity around liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) can be a useful gauge for what the market might do post-unlock.

Liquid Staking Derivatives could exert influence over Beacon Chain unlocks

What are liquid staking derivatives? They are a relatively new financial instrument born of DeFi that function like bearer instruments for staked ETH. Similar to how borrowing and lending protocols give users a share token to represent locked collateral (think Aave’s a-tokens), staking ETH generates a wrapped asset used to claim the equivalent amount of Ethereum from the staking platform. When a staker deposits ETH with major platforms like Lido, Rocketpool, Frax, Stakewise and now Coinbase, they receive a platform-specific flavor of LSD. Because staked tokens are illiquid, these wrapped assets allow stakers to continue earning rewards while securing the network without completely giving up the opportunity to participate in other activities within DeFi.

Liquid staking derivatives aim to solve these problems by allowing staked assets to be traded on secondary markets. This means that stakers could access the value of their staked ETH before the Shanghai upgrade enables withdrawals or, in the future, while maintaining their staked position. For example, a staker could use their wrapped ETH as collateral on another platform, or cover an unexpected expense by selling their LSD on a secondary market.

Ether (ETH) price has increased by 58% year to date, but it has far underperformed the market leader Bitcoin (BTC). In fact, the ETH/BTC price ratio has dropped to 0.063, its lowest level in 9 months. 

Analysts believe that the majority of the movement can be attributed to the Ethereum network's upcoming Shapella hard fork, which is scheduled for April 12 at 10:27 p.m. UTC.

The Ethereum network upgrade will allow stakers to unlock their Ether rewards or stop staking entirely. By April 11, over 170,000 ETH withdrawals were requested, according to the analytics firm Glassnode. However, the total staked on the Beacon Chain exceeds 18.1 million ETH, which has traders fearful until more information on ETH’s potential selling pressure becomes available.

Is the price impact of the Shapella fork already priced in?

The staking unlock was widely known and expected, so traders could have anticipated the movement. Some analysts have gone so far as to call the hard fork a "buy the news" event.

Using a meme, trader @CanteringClark is likely expressing dissatisfaction with the theory, but to invalidate the hypothesis, one must investigate potential reasons for ETH’s underperformance other than the much anticipated hard fork.

LayerZero is a communication method that facilitates cross-chain applications. Its low-level messaging capabilities enable the development of omni-chain functionalities on top of it, such as decentralized exchanges, money market protocols and numerous other DeFi applications that can benefit from cross-chain liquidity provisions.

The LayerZero platform was launched in September 2021 with Stargate Finance, a cross-chain bridge, as the first application built on it. The project raised $261 million in three funding rounds, doubling its valuation from $1 billion to $2 billionfrom March 2022 to March 2023.

Data analytics firm Nansen reported that decentralized applications (Dapps) built on LayerZero are some of the top-used entities across blockchain platforms like Aribtrum, Optimism, Ethereum, Binance Chain and Polygon.

In the first week of April, LayerZero-powered applications like Stargate and Radiant Finance were most used on Arbitrum and Optimism. On Polygon, Binance Chain and Ethereum, LayerZero and its applications ranked between 7th and 30th concerning user activity.

The primary motivation for the increasing adoption is the speculation around the native token airdrop of LayerZero. The team has included a mention of the ZRO token in their source code on Github, which makes an airdrop toward early users likely.

The Ethereum network’s Shapella upgrade, scheduled for around 10:30 pm UTC on April 12, has induced significant uncertainty among traders, according to a report by Kaiko. 

The upgrade will enable staked Ether (ETH) withdrawals from the Beacon Chain for the first time since its launch in December 2020. According to previous estimates, the upgrade will add nearly 1.2 million to 3 million worth of ETH selling pressure in the first few weeks. This is one of the main reasons traders appear to be taking a cautious stance ahead of the upgrade.

Kaiko’s report shows that ETH is lagging behind Bitcoin (BTC) in spot and futures trading volumes, while options market data shows traders are actively adding short-term hedging positions.

Ethereum’s market share in U.S. dollar trading volume compared to Bitcoin declined to March 2021 lows near 30%, per Kaiko data, showing that Ether has “struggled to maintain pace” with Bitcoin spot volumes. During Ethereum’s last big upgrade, the Merge, its market share relative to Bitcoin reached a high of 53%.

Similarly, the relative increase in the open interest (OI) volumes for Bitcoin has surpassed Ethereum considerably with the April 10 price surge above $30,000.

Bitcoin (BTC) spiked higher prior to the April 12 Wall Street open as United States inflation data outperformed market forecasts.

CPI offers "great inflation print" for risk-on bulls

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it neared new ten-month highs on Bitstamp.

Widely-predicted volatility entered immediately following the release of Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for March. This broadly conformed to expectations, with the year-on-year increase undercutting assumptions by 0.2%.

"The all items index increased 5.0 percent for the 12 months ending March; this was the smallest 12-month increase since the period ending May 2021," an accompanying press release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed.

This was nonetheless enough to spark some optimistic upside on crypto markets ahead of the Wall Street open, with potential further upside in line with equities to come.

Bitcoin (BTC) traced $30,000 on April 12 as looming United States macroeconomic data heightened nerves.

Analyst warns markets "discounting significance" of CPI

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hovering near the significant psychological level after overnight lows of $29,875 on Bitstamp.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) for March are due at 2.30pm Eastern time, followed by minutes from last month’s meeting of the Federal Reserve Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), at which policymakers confirmed a 0.25% interest rate hike.

“Today is US CPI day, and for the first time in a long while, it feels like the market is discounting the significance of this event…,” analytics account Tedtalksmacro wrote in part of Twitter commentary.

“Trader positioning leading into today is nowhere near as conservative/risk-off as we typically would observe.”