Bitcoin is doing the familiar dance just below a big round number, $80,000, stopped by sellers, though fresh stablecoin liquidity, ETF demand and a risk-averse equity market suggest the breakout may be delayed rather than rejected.
The leading cryptocurrency briefly rose above $79,000 in Asian trading hours before recently slipping back to trade below $78,000. Over the past 24 hours, bitcoin has lost about 0.4%. Ether (ETH) is down 0.6%, XRP (XRP) is down 0.8% and Solana’s SOL is down more than 1%. Broader market benchmarks, including the CoinDesk Memecoin Index and the Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index, were also under pressure, falling more than 1% each.
According to Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, the $80,000 level acts as a short-term ceiling due to concentrated sell orders.
“Bitcoin has approached the $80K mark for the second time in the last few days, but has since experienced significant downward momentum. As it approaches this round number, a build-up of sell orders prevents the coin from moving further up,” he said in an email.
Still, Kuptsikevich argued that the pullback appears temporary and in line with a broader uptrend that began in late March.
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On-chain and ETF data support this view. Crypto exchange Binance has recorded net inflows of about $3.4 billion in stablecoins so far this month, after $3 billion in March, according to CryptoQuant data. This suggests new capital inflows waiting for an entry point.
“This indicates an influx of new capital waiting to join the recovery,” pseudonymous CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost wrote on X.
Institutional demand remains strong. U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs have pulled in $2.44 billion in investor money this month, the most since October, when bitcoin hit record highs above $126,000.
But it’s not all funny. Security risks in decentralized finance (DeFi) continue to weigh on sentiment. On Sunday, the SUI-based lending platform Scallop was exploited, resulting in the loss of about 150,000 SUI, or about $142,000. While small, it adds to a growing list of attacks this month, including the massive Drift and KelpDAO exploits.
Collectively, DeFi protocols lost an estimated $623 million to hacks in April alone, according to Memento Research. Since its inception, total losses from DeFi-related exploits have risen to around $7.72 billion, according to data source DeFiLlama. This underlines a continuing structural risk for the sector.
In traditional markets, WTI crude oil prices continue to hover above $90 per barrel. barrel, with Brent above $100 as supply remains tight. The latest pricing is significantly higher than $70 or below before the Iran war began in late February, and threatens to destabilize the global economy with high inflation. Pay attention!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today. For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
What is trending
Today’s signal
The pie chart shows the breakdown of total losses incurred in crypto hacks by various attack methods, including private key compromises, phishing exploits, access control issues, and other smart contract vulnerabilities.
Since its inception, the largest vulnerability has been private key compromises, accounting for 40% of the total.
Think of a private key as the master password for your crypto wallet. It’s a long, random string that proves you control your wallet and own crypto funds in it so you can trade on-chain. The problem, however, is that there is no password reset option if you lose the key.
So once the hacker has it, you’ve lost your wallet and money. This is known as the private key compromise, and the fact that it is the biggest security risk indicates that audits need to focus beyond just smart contracts.
