Bitcoin in Pullback Mode as Regulatory Concerns Rise

Bitcoin extended its pullback on Tuesday as buyers continue to take profits from the $40,000 resistance level. The cryptocurrency was trading around $38,000 at press time and is down about 4% over the past week. Ongoing regulatory concerns in the U.S. and China have kept some bitcoin buyers on the sidelines, with lower support seen around $34,000 to $36,000.

“We expect the pullback to mature in one to two weeks near the 50-day moving average around $34K, after which bitcoin is likely to clear $42.6K for a revised upside target near $51K,” wrote Katie Stockton, managing director of Fairlead Strategies, in a Monday newsletter.

Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has broken out of a two-month consolidation relative to bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio faces initial resistance near 0.07, and a decisive break above that level could yield further upside towards 0.08.

ETH could find support around $2,300 to $2,400. “If ETH successfully holds above support, we expect upward momentum from the current move toward a proof-of-stake Ethereum 2.0 to push for a retest of the all-time high (around $4K),” wrote QCP Capital in a Telegram chat. 

Some ether bulls are also enthused about the Ethereum blockchain’s upcoming London hard fork, an upgrade expected later this week that’s expected to reduce the network’s net issuance of new units of the cryptocurrency.  

“We are less optimistic about BTC and we think that upside on BTC might be capped in the near term,” QCP wrote.

“Last week’s short squeeze led a large contango to open in the futures market, but as bitcoin failed to break out from its range the contango has declined in recent days,” wrote Arcane Research in a Tuesday newsletter.

Contango is a term used to describe bullish arbitrage, which occurs when the bitcoin futures price is higher than the spot price. Since April, bitcoin’s contango has narrowed as bullish sentiment waned.

“The CME contango remains substantially below the unregulated exchanges, suggesting that the institutional investors remain more cautious than the crypto native traders,” Arcane wrote.

The growing contango could also suggest an accumulation of leveraged long positions, albeit slightly lower over the past week. “Be wary of potential long squeezes if bitcoin fails to find support above $37,000,” Arcane wrote.

A significant amount of bitcoin has flowed out of exchanges over the past week, which could indicate investors’ preference to hold rather than sell positions.

“The exchange net position change metric maps out the monthly rate of coins flowing in (green) or out (red) of all exchanges,” wrote Glassnode in a Monday newsletter. “This week we have seen an extremely large volume of coins flow out of exchanges, comparable to the peak outflows seen in November 2020.”

The amount of the stablecoin gemini dollar (GUSD) on exchanges has seen a sharp decline recently, which may imply an ongoing rise in bitcoin’s price, according to a chart by Mignolet on CryptoQuant. In 2018, when the downward trend of bitcoin price was reversed, GUSD saw a drop in its amount. 

Meanwhile, the combined market cap of the largest two stablecoins, USDT and USDC, is approaching $90 billion, while the market cap of USDC increased sixfold since the beginning of the year, according to Skew, a data provider. 

The tether stablecoin’s daily usage on Ethereum has shifted slightly later in the day from Asian business hours toward European and U.S. market hours, possibly a result of China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and USDT users’ migration to other blockchains from Ethereum, a new report suggests. 

In 2020, most USDT activity on Ethereum happened between 2:00 and 14:00 coordinated universal time, while the period from 6:00 to 8:00 UTC was the busiest, according to the report by blockchain-analysis firm Coin Metrics. However, in 2021, there has been less usage during 2:00 and 6:00 UTC, and more during 15:00 to 20:00 UTC.

Investors can trade crypto 24 hours, seven days a week but local stock exchange times can be used as a proxy for when traders in any given region are active. The trading hours of the Hong Kong stock exchange, London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange are 1:30 to 8:00 UTC, 8:00 to 16:30 UTC and 14:30 to 21:00 UTC, respectively.  

Most digital assets on CoinDesk 20 ended lower on Tuesday.  

Notable winners of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):