Market Wrap: Traders Brace for Higher Volatility; Altcoins Underperform

Most cryptocurrencies traded lower on Monday, although selling pressure appears to be slowing compared to last week. Bitcoin was down about 2% over the past 24 hours, compared to a 3% decline in ether and a 6% drop in Solana’s SOL token.

The underperformance of alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) on Monday suggests traders are still being cautious. Altcoins tend to decline more than bitcoin during market downturns due to their higher risk profile.

The latest price declines resulted in losses for some leveraged traders. For example, more than 109,000 traders were hit with liquidations over the past 24 hours as bitcoin dipped below $40,000 on Monday for the first time since September.

“The volatility markets do not seem to be reflecting “extreme fear,” crypto trading firm QCP Capital wrote in a Telegram announcement on Monday. “In fact, over Friday and the weekend, our volatility desk saw large call buying interest especially in both BTC and ETH,” QCP wrote.

Latest prices

• Bitcoin (BTC): $41,714, -1.77%
• Ether (ETH): $3,082, -3.60%
• S&P 500: $4,670, -0.14%
• Gold: $1,800, +0.18%
• 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.77%

Record crypto fund outflows

As crypto prices fall, fund investors remain bearish. Record weekly outflows from digital asset investment products totaled $207 million in the seven days through Jan. 7.

The spate of redemptions adds to pressure on the market that began in mid-December, bringing the four-week outflow total to $465 million, CoinDesk’s Lyllah Ledesma reported.

Investment funds focused on bitcoin saw outflows of $107 million, while ether-focused funds saw outflows of $39 million last week, bringing the last four-week run of outflows to $180 million.

Altcoin roundup

• Avalanche, polygon limited price bounce: Avalanche (AVAX) and polygon (MATIC) initially rose about 4% during the Asia trading session, but ended up lower over the past 24 hours. Generally, most altcoins underperformed bitcoin on Monday, indicating a lower appetite for risk among crypto traders.
• Binance.US’ office in the Solana metaverse: Crypto exchange Binance.US is building a space in Portals, a metaverse platform built on the Solana blockchain. Companies have been rushing into open metaverses such as The Sandbox and Decentraland, both of which are Ethereum-based. Portals seems to be an early favorite for capturing metaverse mania on the high-speed Solana blockchain, according to CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa. Read more here.
• Tree planting milestone on the Cardona blockchain: Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard tweeted Sunday that it has reached the goal of planting 1 million trees. Cardano’s partner, Veritree, plants a tree each time Cardano’s ADA currency is exchanged for a TREE token. TREE, in turn, can be redeemed for digital trees and non-fungible tokens (NFT) during certain “redemption days.” The activity is part of a broader effort by Cardano to become a climate-positive blockchain, according to CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa. Read more here.

Relevant news

• Major Mining Pools’ Bitcoin Hashrate Nears Recovery as Kazakhstan’s Internet Is Partially Restored
• Binance CEO Zhao Is Worth $96B Excluding Crypto Holdings: Report
• Billionaire Investor Bill Miller Now Has 50% of His Personal Wealth in Bitcoin
• Bitfarms Bought $43.2M of Bitcoin in the First Week of January

Other markets

Most digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day lower.

Largest winners:

Asset Ticker Returns Sector Cosmos ATOM +2.1% Smart Contract Platform

Largest losers:

Asset Ticker Returns Sector Filecoin FIL −8.2% Computing Solana SOL −5.9% Smart Contract Platform Dogecoin DOGE −5.9% Currency

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.