Bitcoin one step forward, one step back at $40,000: "Beware of market impatience"
Boredom in the cryptocurrency market. This is how most experts describe the price action of Bitcoin and the rest of the digital tokens, which continue to move in a wide price channel they have maintained for months, although the appearance looks depressed, with the queen of cryptos struggling to hold on to $40,000.
Last week, the price of the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell and Bitcoin closed with a bearish tone on its weekly chart. "The price is looking for higher and lower support. Most altcoins followed similar price movements," commented Alejandro Zala, country manager of Bitpanda in Spain.
The digital currency extended the sell-off to a five-week low around $38,547 on Monday, before climbing back above $40,000 later in the day. Overall, however, the price action seemed fairly quiet, according to Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca.
"In digital assets a dull market is usually considered a weak market, because if it's not going up, it must be going down," he explained. However, he warned that "bored traders in digital asset markets become impatient traders, which leads to pullbacks."
As for the rest of the market, Ethereum briefly dipped below $3,000, hitting a low of $2,880 on Monday before recovering back above $3,000.
"The crypto asset market's second-largest cryptocurrency is moving within a descending channel. The MACD momentum indicator is recovering, but is still in negative territory, while the RSI indicator is trying to turn the neutral 50 line bullish," Zala noted.
"Considering the current market sentiment, bullish investors seem to lack the buying power to drive the price of Ether - the Ethereum network unit," he added.
Other major altcoins are tracking the price of Bitcoin. The market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market as a whole fell to $1.74 trillion, down from the $2 trillion it reached in early April. It appears to be recovering to nearly $1.9 trillion on Tuesday.