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A rally more than a week ago lifted bitcoin prices above the key $45,000 level.
Dreamstime
Bitcoin
prices slipped on Monday while a number of smaller cryptocurrencies, or “altcoins,” outperformed.
Bitcoin, the leading digital asset, was down 1% over the past 24 hours to just below $46,000. A rally more than a week ago carried the crypto above the key $45,000 mark for the first time since January—a level bitcoin has managed to defend, going up as high as $48,000 in the last week.
“Bitcoin seems like it wants to hover here, with prices likely to trade between the $44,500 and $47,000 levels,” Edward Moya, an analyst from broker Oanda, said on Friday as prices held in the same range.
Smaller peer
ether
exhibited similar price action. The token underpinning the Ethereum blockchain network fell slightly to just below $3,500, continuing to trade at the highest levels since early January.
Bitcoin and ether remain well off all-time highs of $68,990 and $4,865, respectively, reached early last November.
Some altcoins and “memecoins”—called that because they were initially intended as internet jokes rather than significant blockchain projects—outperformed.
Cardano
was up 3%, while
dogecoin
gained 2%.
Solana
and
luna
were down 2% to 3%, outpacing declines in bitcoin.
Major bitcoin investors increasing their holdings was one factor catalyzing the latest rally. Terra, an ecosystem of so-called stablecoins, which have their prices pegged to underlying assets such as a national currency, plans to purchase significant amounts of bitcoin for its reserves.
Founder Do Kown recently said that Terra would be buying up $10 billion worth of bitcoin and that more than $3 billion has already been purchased. Trends like this are supportive of prices.
“Bitcoin needs a couple more major investments in order to make a run above the $50,000 level and that might take some time given the global bond market selloff,” Moya said.
Other analysts have eyed data showing that significant amounts of bitcoin are being held, not just traded, as indicating that further price momentum could be building.
“On-chain metrics suggests long term holders dominate the market,” said Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock (ticker: BLOK). Sotiriou pointed to data from Glassnode showing that nearly 100,000 bitcoin flowed out from exchanges in the past 30 days. “When this has happened in the past, it has often resulted in tremendous rallies,” the analyst said.
Write to Jack Denton at jack.denton@dowjones.com