Market Wrap: Cryptos Pull Back, Traders Eye Opportunities in Ether Versus Bitcoin

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Bitcoin (BTC) retreated from a high of $47,431 on Monday as bullish sentiment waned.

Some alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) such as Solana's SOL and Polkadot's DOT token declined by as much as 6% over the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, WAVES fell by 25% after USDN, an algorithmic stablecoin of the Waves ecosystem, lost its U.S. dollar peg. Last week, several people on Twitter accused the Waves team of manipulating the price of its native token through its decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Vires.finance.

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Despite the current pullback, some analysts remain optimistic about bitcoin's future price direction, pointing to improving blockchain data.

"BTC is flowing out of exchanges at a rate of over 96,000 BTC per month, which means strong accumulation is taking place," Glassnode, a crypto data provider, wrote in a blog post on Monday. Both small and large-size holders have been accumulating bitcoin, especially after the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) purchased more than 30,000 BTC over the past week (track LFG reserve purchases here).

Still, the rise in BTC demand will need to be sustained to support the price recovery. "A breakout of the 200-day moving average is required to confirm bullish sentiment," Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at FxPro, wrote in an email. "Breaking out of the $45K-48K range could signal the start of a broader trend in the direction of the breakout."

Latest prices

●Bitcoin (BTC): $45,907, −1.10%

●Ether (ETH): $3,488, +0.12%

●S&P 500 daily close: $4,583, +0.81%

●Gold: $1,935 per troy ounce, +0.83%

●Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 2.41%

Bitcoin, ether and gold prices are taken at approximately 4pm New York time. Bitcoin is the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX); Ether is the CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX); Gold is the COMEX spot price. Information about CoinDesk Indices can be found at coindesk.com/indices.

Bitcoin's trading volume across spot exchanges ticked lower over the past few days, according to CoinDesk data. There has been a persistent decline in trading activity since the Feb. 24 price dip toward $34,500, indicating some uncertainty among market participants despite the recent price rally.

Similarly, volatility in the bitcoin options market is also trending lower, while some traders have positioned themselves for a bullish run in the spot price.

"Our conviction view now is to be short volatility as macroeconomic factors place pressure on markets while the LFG [buying] supports the market," QCP Capital, a Singapore-based crypto trading firm, wrote in a Telegram announcement. "We think crypto prices will grind higher toward the second half of the year and any dip will be met with confident buying."

Ether vs. bitcoin trade

Ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is up by 28% over the past month, compared with a 14% rise in bitcoin.

Further, ETH's put/call ratio significantly increased at the end of March, which means traders began to sell far out-of-the-money downside protection. The more negative skew in ETH presents an opportunity for some traders, according to Gregoire Magadini, CEO of Genesis Volatility.

"The seven-day option skew is about -8 points, while BTC is only -4 points, despite the overall at-the-month implied volatility spread between ETH and BTC being rather close," Magadini wrote in a message to CoinDesk. "For those looking to buy volatility, this means the short-term ETH calls are very cheap compared with similar BTC calls."

This chart shows the ETH/BTC price ratio, which is approaching initial resistance at 0.076. The ratio is overbought on the daily chart, which typically precedes a brief pullback. The next major resistance level is at 0.082, which is roughly 8% away.

Altcoin roundup

• Thousands of ether from Ronin exploit moved to Tornado Cash: The exploiter behind Ronin’s unprecedented $625 million bridge attack from last week apparently moved 1,400 ethers (ETH) to privacy tool Tornado Cash on Monday morning during the Asia trading day, and then the remaining 600 ETH during the European trading day, on-chain data connected to the exploit’s addresses show. Read more here.

• Pudgy Penguins NFT collection’s $2.5 million sale: The Pudgy Penguins non-fungible token (NFT) project is under new leadership after the close of a long-awaited 750 ETH ($2.5 million) sale. A group led by Pudgy Penguins holder and Los Angeles-based entrepreneur Luca Netz will buy control of the project, along with royalties, from the original four co-founders of the project, according to people involved with the deal. Read more here.

• DeFi lender Inverse Finance exploited for $15.6 million: Ethereum-based lending platform Inverse Finance (INV) said Saturday it suffered an exploit, with an attacker netting $15.6 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency. According to Inverse, the attacker targeted its Anchor (ANC) money market – artificially manipulating token prices to borrow loans against extremely low collateral. This is the third multimillion-dollar hack of a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that made headlines last week. Read more here.

Relevant reads

• Post-Merge Ether Will Be a Commodity-Linked Bond, Could Rally to $10K, BitMEX Founder Says: The post-Merge bond-like appeal and ESG-compliant label would make ether more attractive than other layer 1 cryptocurrencies, according to BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes.

• Dogecoin Spikes 10% After News of Musk's $3B Stake in Twitter: The prices of some other meme coins rose in tandem.

• Waves' USDN Stablecoin Loses Peg, Drops 15% Amid Manipulation Scare: USDN's market capitalization had nearly doubled to $850 million in March.

• Frax Finance’s FXS Jumps as Terra Introduces Stablecoin Pool ‘4pool’: Liquidity from four major protocols would be used to make Curve’s 4pool attractive for users.

• Intel Doubles Down on ESG With Launch of Second-Gen Bitcoin Mining Chips: The “Intel Blockscale ASIC” chip boasts efficiency up to 26 J/TH, which would make it better than most Bitmain and MicroBT models now on the market.

Other markets

Digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day lower.

Largest winners:

Largest losers:

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive, and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk 20 is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges.