A Lone Rally: LINK Thrives Amid Crypto Decline
Bitcoin Trapped in a Narrow Range – Breakout Incoming?
The cryptocurrency market saw a general decline on Thursday, but Chainlink’s native token, LINK, bucked the trend. While other major cryptocurrencies experienced a downturn, LINK stood out as the only one with significant gains among the top 30 tokens by market capitalization.
LINK surged more than 15% during the last 24 hours (at the time of writing), breaking above $8 for the first time in nearly three months. This rally was driven by large-scale investors, or ‘crypto whales,’ who purchased $6 million of tokens. This bullish activity followed Chainlink’s recent launch of an interoperability protocol. Tested by the interbank communication system Swift, this protocol aims to bridge the communication gap between blockchains and banks.
Bitcoin, the flagship digital currency, revisited the lower end of its monthly trading bracket, dipping to a low of $29,521 Thursday afternoon. This value matches its lowest point in a month. Bitcoin has been fluctuating within a narrow range since June 21, bouncing between the $29,500 mark and highs of $31,818.
Other significant cryptocurrencies like Ether and Ripple’s XRP also experienced a slump. Ether fell below $1,900, marking a 1% decrease from the same time the previous day. Meanwhile, XRP saw a 5% reduction in the last 24 hours, trimming some of its recent substantial gains that were triggered last week by the partial victory against the SEC in the now-famous lawsuit.
The recent crypto slump could be tied to the sell-off wave in tech stocks. Shares in tech giants Tesla and Netflix were discarded following underwhelming quarterly earnings reports. Cryptocurrency prices are historically known to mirror tech-heavy indices like the NASDAQ 100 (NDQ), but the correlation was less consistent this year.
Chart Analysis – BTC/USD
Bitcoin is currently trapped within a narrow trading range, oscillating between $30,000 and $31,500. Following a swift surge to the upper limit of $31,500, the momentum from the bulls faltered, providing an opening for the sellers to regain control. At present, the BTC/USD pair is trading towards the lower boundary of this range. Although it is slightly below $30,000, I cannot consider this level to be clearly broken.
The small size of the candles points to a period of market congestion. Additionally, the Bollinger bands appear to be squeezed tightly together, indicative of low volatility. Often, such conditions precede a substantial price swing, though predicting the direction of this potential movement can be challenging.
Critical thresholds to monitor are the $30,000 and $31,500 levels. If the price dips below the $30,000 mark, the 50-day Moving Average could emerge as the next support level.
