Citigoup, Inc Wants a Piece of the Bitcoin Pie
Citi Considers Adding Crypto Services
by Bogdan Giulvezan
According to a report from the Financial Times, the banking giant Citigroup Inc. is currently weighing the possibility of offering cryptocurrency services to its clients. At the time of writing it is not clear if the bank will add these services but the options on the table are custody, financing, and even trading.
According to Citi’s global head of foreign exchange, Itay Tuchman, the bank has seen a rapid surge of attention from not only retail clients but also asset managers. However, Tuchman added that the bank is in no rush to make the final decision regarding the extent to which it will move into the crypto market.
This news comes after Goldman Sachs announced Thursday that it was allowing trading of a derivative based on Bitcoin price. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs also restarted its crypto trading desk and began dealing in BTC futures.
The growing interest coming from banking giants is likely to generate additional upside for Bitcoin but at least for the last week, the Digital King has been trailing behind its crypto brethren, at least in terms of percentages.
Ethereum is up almost 24% in the last 7 days and has managed to print a new all-time high at $3,610 on Thursday, May 6. It has now pulled back a bit, trading at $3,444.
The dark horse Dogecoin is still wowing everyone, currently trading at $0.63 for a whopping 105% increase over the last 7 days. Let’s not forget that in early April, DOGE was valued at 0.05 against the US Dollar and was nowhere to be seen in the Top 10 rankings, while now it is sitting comfortably in the number 4 spot, ahead Ripple’s XRP.
Binance’s BNB is trading at $625 at the time of writing, coming off highs above $700, and remains one of the best-performing coins this year, although percent-wise it has added only 1.61% in the last 7 days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Chart Analysis – BNB/USD
BNB’s meteoric rise took it just above the $700 mark, where it started to correct lower, finding support on the $600 level. Although the pair had an incredibly sharp rise from March 25 to April 12 (when it advanced from $230 to just above $600), its climb has been somewhat choppy since then and we can even see that the Relative Strength Index is creating a lower high, while price printed a higher high, which is known as bearish divergence.
This bearish divergence is a sign that a deeper retracement will occur and that a move below $600 support is not out of the question. If this comes true, the pair may find support at the 50 days Moving Average or at one of the big round numbers currently below the price ($550, $500, etc.).
Although I’ve talked about the signs of a retracement, it should be noted that BNB is in a clear and strong uptrend, thus the chances of another break of the ATH remain high, as long as we don’t see a significant lower-low and/or lower-high, which are signs that the uptrend may be fading.
