After Bitcoin (BTC) was rejected for the third time in a row, investors gained more confidence in adding altcoin positions. For the leading cryptocurrency, the path to $50,000 looks more challenging than previously anticipated.
According to Euronews Next, on March 14, the European Union rejected a proposed rule that could have banned the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mining algorithm used by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Several EU parliamentarians have pushed for a ban on PoW mining due to energy problems.
In terms of performance, the total market cap of all cryptos has been relatively flat over the past seven days, with a modest gain of 0.4% to $1.77 trillion. However, the apparent lack of performance in the overall market does not represent a few medium capitalization altcoins, which managed to gain 17% or more in a single week.
Bitcoin presented a gain of 2.5% in the past seven days, while vice-leader Ether (ETH) was up 3.6%. However, they were no match for the altcoin rally that took place. Below are the biggest winners and losers of the 80 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
THORChain (RUNE) surged after enabling synthetic tokens on March 10. Those derivatives are linked to the value of other underlying collateralised assets. In the version of THORChain, the project has chosen to support its synths with 50% of the underlying and 50% in RUNE.
Privacy tokens ZCash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) rallied when US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on March 9 aimed at establishing a regulatory framework for crypto — citing its potential role in sanctions evasion .
Finally, Terra (LUNA) recovered after Terraform Labs donated $1.1 billion to Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) reserves on March 11. LFG was launched in January as part of a wider effort to grow the Terra ecosystem and improve the sustainability of the network’s stablecoins.
On the other hand, Fantom (FTM) led the worst performers after prominent Fantom Foundation team members Andre Cronje and Anton Nell announced their departure.
Meanwhile, on March 10, Celo (CELO) was hit by a hack on its third-party email service. A phishing message was sent to all of its 25,741 users, but the attack was quickly investigated and the Celo Foundation posted warnings on its social channels.
The OKX Tether (USDT) premium is a good gauge of cryptocurrency demand in China. It measures the difference between China-based peer-to-peer transactions in USDT and the official US dollar.
Excessive buying demand tends to pressure the indicator above its fair value, which is 100%. On the other hand, Tether’s market supply is flooded during bearish markets, causing a discount of 4% or more.
Currently, the Tether premium is at 100.7%, which is neutral. Nevertheless, there has been a constant improvement over the past two months. This data indicates that retail demand is picking up, which is positive as the total cryptocurrency capitalization dropped by 50% between January 1 and March 14.
Funding rates show a lack of excitement
Perpetual contracts, also known as inverse swaps, have an embedded rate that is usually charged every eight hours. Perpetual futures are the preferred derivatives of retailers because their price follows regular spot markets perfectly.
Exchanges use this compensation to avoid imbalances in exchange rate risk. A positive funding ratio indicates that longs (buyers) require more leverage. However, the opposite situation occurs when shorts (sellers) require additional leverage, making the funding rate negative.
Note how the accumulated seven-day financing rate is problem-free in most cases. Such data indicates a balanced demand for leverage between long (buyers) and sellers (shorts).
For example, Polkadot’s (DOT) negative 0.30% weekly rate equals 1.2% per month, which is not a burden to traders building futures positions. When there is an imbalance caused by excessive pessimism, that percentage can usually easily exceed 5% per month.
Some might argue that the third failure to keep Bitcoin prices above $42,000 was the nail in the coffin for the bulls as the cryptocurrency failed to show strength during a period of global macroeconomic uncertainty and a recession. huge increase in raw materials.
Still, there are no signs of bearishness from Asian retailers as measured by the CNY Tether premium, and there is no indication of pressure from leverage shorts (sellers) in futures markets.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risks. You should do your own research when making a decision.