Bitcoin managed to reclaim the $95000 support level on Wednesday after slipping as low as $93,696 on December 3, due to political tensions in South Korea.
The altcoin market on the other hand continued to see a massive influx of liquidity that pushed the overall cryptocurrency market capitalisation to a new all-time high of $3.73 trillion, up roughly 4% from the previous day.
Broader market sentiment was bullish when writing, with the Crypto Fear and Greed Index sitting at 80 at press time, indicating that the market remains in a state of extreme greed, even though it has failed to provide BTC the momentum it needs to break past the $100,000 mark.
What’s next for BTC?
Bitcoin managed to recover from the dip triggered by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declaring martial law on Tuesday on the back of institutional buying, with US spot Bitcoin ETFs recording inflows of $676 million on the day.
Further CryptoQuant data shows the outflows from centralised exchanges thwarted inflows over the past 24 hours, bringing the total netflows to -10.0492K.
As such, it can be estimated that long-term market sentiment around the flagship asset remains bullish.
However, without any major catalysts at play, some market pundits expect BTC to trade sideways in the short term.
According to analyst CrypNuevo, the downside wick on the BTC/USDT weekly chart remains partially unfilled, which he pointed out could signal the potential for a deeper retest, with targets as low as $90,000 if bearish momentum builds.
Fellow trader Byzantine General pointed to an even lower target, suggesting that a retest of the $86,000–$90,000 range, expected in late December 2024 and early January 2025, remains possible if current support levels fail to hold.
On the contrary, pseudonymous trader Scofield expects a breakout towards mid-December, noting that Bitcoin has been consolidating between $93,500 and $96,000 over the past weeks which he likely views as a sign of building momentum.
The next major catalyst for Bitcoin is going to be a potential US Federal Reserve’s rate cut with the CME FedWatch Tool indicating a 74.5% possibility of a 0.25% rate cut during the December 18 meeting.
Upon writing, Bitcoin was trading at $96,158.15 up 0.5% in the past 24 hours while its market dominance remained in the low 50s.
All factors point to an ongoing altcoin season.
The altcoin season index has increased from 86 on Tuesday to 88 when writing, which reinforces the narrative that alts were gaining momentum.
Most of the top 99 altcoins were in green, while the leading gainers for the day posted double-digit gains.
The top performers were:
Tron
Tron (TRX) led the highest gains among the top 100 crypto assets by market cap.
The altcoin was up 46.7% over the past 24 hours and hit an all-time high of $0.431 on December 4 before settling at $0.354 at the time of writing.
The surge in price has pushed its market cap to $30.49 billion up over 230% from its lowest point this year.
Source: CoinMarketCap
TRX’s recent rally coincides with a jump in open interest in the futures market.
According to data from CoinGlass, the OI in its futures market has increased by 88% over the past day to $425 million.
Such a significant rise in OI suggests a very high demand for the asset from derivatives traders who are very bullish on the asset.
The altcoin has also emerged as a top performer in the DeFi sector, with its total value locked (TVL) increasing by over 50% in the past day—significantly surpassing the 3.5% and 3% changes observed in leading DeFi blockchains, Ethereum and Solana, respectively.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid (HYPE) gained 28.2% over the past day with its market cap hitting its new peak of $4.32 billion earlier on December 4.
Source: CoinMarketCap
HYPE’s recent rally stems from the smooth execution of its Token Generation Event (TGE) on November 29, which distributed 31% of the altcoin’s total supply to the community, worth $1.2 billion.
The absence of technical issues during the airdrop and no allocations for venture capitalists or private investors have likely strengthened investor interest in the altcoin.
Further user sentiment on X remains highly positive, driven by its features like the TWAP mechanism.
The feature allows large orders to be split into smaller transactions every 30 seconds, ensuring a maximum slippage of 3%, hence appealing to users and adding fuel to HYPE’s rally.
Mantle
Over the past day, Mantle (MNT) surged 25% to an eight-month high of $1.13 earlier on Wednesday.
At press time the token was trading at $1.10, with a market cap of $3.6 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $380.9 million.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Most of the altcoin’s recent gains came after the Ethereum layer 2 solution integrated oracle provider Chainlink’s cross-chain interoperability protocol enabling Mantle to connect with multiple blockchains seamlessly and provide a secure and reliable framework to build decentralised applications.
Meanwhile, the current optimism in the altcoin market helped extend the rally towards the later hours of the day.
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