Market Wrap: What happened with the top five cryptocurrencies this week? (28-Jan-2022 to 4-Feb-2022)
Could we finally be coming out of the bear market? The environment of hiked interest rates, inflation, and uncertainty that’s plagued the traditional and crypto markets for months is still at large, but an uptrend in the prices of the top cryptocurrencies, along with improving sentiment, signal that the bulls might finally be here.
With small-time holders of Bitcoin and Ethereum at an all-time high, and crypto wallets with a non-zero balance following suit, signs point to a bullish market. This likely means that more people are “trying out” an investment in crypto with the market dip, and seeing what gains they make.
The sentiment of the market did slightly improve over the week, albeit only briefly, with a more optimistic outlook that the bear market might be over, traders and investors could have more confidence to buy based on historical trends.
Market sentiment can be tracked with the Crypto Fear and Greed Index, which analyses emotions and sentiments in the market and rates it out of 100. The index is currently sitting at 20 out of 100, within the “Extreme Fear” territory. The score briefly escaped the “Extreme Fear” category this week, which did place it near its July 2020 score, which preceded a recovery in crypto prices at the time.
Bitcoin
Market mover Bitcoin has been on a slight upward trajectory since the weekend, with support levels taking a small jump from US$37,000 to US$38,000 whilst seeing resistance below the US$40,000 mark, topping the week at US$39,048.
As of this morning, the price has dropped away again, edging back to a support of US$36,000. Overall, Bitcoin has lost 1 per cent over the week.
Ethereum
Ethereum has seen some good gains over the week, with a consistent uptrend pushing the price from the US$2,400 range to hit a top of US$2,807 on Thursday. Even though the price since Thursday has trended down, it has gained 5.1 per cent over the past seven days.
Binance Coin
BNB has seen choppy trading, an eight per cent hike between 8 am and 10 am last Friday pushed the price above US$390 from the US$360 range where it had seemed to have hit resistance.
The price has seen a decline since, back to the US$365, and has lost 3.4 per cent over the week overall.
Cardano
The Cardano price movement has been moving sideways this week, seeing support at US$1.02 and resistance at US$1.08.
Yesterday, Cardano developers proposed a network update to increase the block size, thereby increasing network capacity, which could be a bullish signal. Even so, $ADA is down three per cent on the week.
Solana
Solana has seen the most bullish price gains, with an 18.8 per cent jump on Tuesday to hit a high of US$112, breaking through the US$100 resistance seen last week.
Tuesday’s price rally has been attributed to the listing of two low cap Solana based tokens, Orca (ORCA) and Bonfida (FIDA), on Coinbase, which received wide support on the platform.
Solana is up five per cent over the last seven days.
Disclosure: at the time of writing, the author of this feature owned some of the cryptocurrencies on this list.
