First Mover Asia: Bitcoin Enters ‘Extreme Greed’ Territory; Altcoins Rally

Good morning, Here’s what’s happening:

Market moves: Bitcoin enters “extreme greed” territory.

Technician’s take: Buyers could return on price dips into Asian trading session.

Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis.

Prices

• Bitcoin (BTC): $67,293
• Ether (ETH): $4,745

Market moves

Bitcoin was roughly flat the past 24 hours, trading at about $67,300 at the time of publication. The No. 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization spent most of U.S. trading hours on Tuesday ranging between $63,500 and $68,500, with a slightly elevated volume across major centralized exchanges. Ether was down about 1.3% over the same period, trading at just above $4,700.

Data collected by CoinDesk shows that bitcoin’s trading volume has risen in the past two days, but it is still far from the high level last seen on Oct. 15. As CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole wrote in his U.S. First Mover newsletter Tuesday, a low-volume price rally is often short-lived.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin Fear & Greed Index, which entered “extreme greed” territory on Tuesday, was at the highest level since Oct. 21, which preceded a sharp sell-off in bitcoin. The index measures market emotions: When investors are too greedy, the market may be due for a correction soon.

The kind of FOMO (fear of missing out) on the current market is also reflected in the rally of several alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins), such as LRC$0.06357, LPT$4.6503 and LTC$96.00. According to analysts, the reasons behind these rallies are more speculative than market fundamentals (notice that the three tokens share similar tickers).

“I don’t know if there’s a specific catalyst for livepeer’s recent price performance,” Messari research analyst Mason Nystrom said. He pointed out that the most recent development on Livepeer, an open-source video platform based on Ethereum, was the acquisition of MistServer, a streaming media server, on Oct. 19.

There have been rumors that the Loopring project is helping GameStop build its first non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. Daniel Wang, CEO of Loopring, said “no comment” on the GameStop hearsay to CoinDesk. At the time of publication, GameStop had not responded to CoinDesk’s requests for comment.

Technician’s take

Bitcoin rally stalls; could find support at $63K-$65K

BTC$95,877.13 is relinquishing some gains after reaching an all-time high near $68,500 on Monday. The cryptocurrency is overbought on intraday charts, although support around the $63,000-$65,000 range could stabilize a pullback.

The relative strength index (RSI) on the four-hour chart is the most overbought since Oct. 20, which preceded a near-10% price decline. Still, pullbacks have been shallow over the past few weeks as buyers remain active on breakouts.

The 100-period moving average on the four-hour chart is sloping upward, indicating positive trend strength over the short-term. This means buyers could eventually return on price dips into the Asian trading session.

Important events

8 a.m. Hong Kong/Singapore (12 a.m. UTC): European Consumer Price Index (October)

2:30 p.m. Hong Kong/Singapore (6:30 a.m. UTC): U.S. Consumer Price Index (October)

2:30 p.m. Hong Kong/Singapore (6:30 a.m. UTC): U.S. initial jobless claims four-week average (week of Nov. 5)

5 p.m. Hong Kong/Singapore (9 a.m. UTC): Break Point conference organized by the Solana Foundation to assemble cryptocurrency leaders.

On CoinDesk TV

In case you missed it, here are the most recent episodes of “First Mover” on CoinDesk TV:

Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Above $68K as Ether Also Sets New Record

“First Mover” hosts spoke with Customers Bank CEO and co-founder Sam Sidhu for his market insights as both bitcoin and ether jumped to new all-time highs. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published crypto anti-money laundering guidance. ACAMS Executive Director Rick McDonell provided his take on the guidance and implications for cryptocurrency. Plus, Nestcoin CEO and founding partner Yele Bademosi provided an update on the rollout of Nigeria’s central bank digital currency eNaira.

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