Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Bitcoin has been struggling to move past the $30k level in recent weeks.
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XRP, XLM and others have cooled down after experiencing massive rallies last week.
Bitcoin Still Stuck Below $30k
Bitcoin has been trading in a ranging market for the past three weeks. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap has been stuck between the $29,500 and $31,800 levels over the last month, indicating a ranging market.
There hasn’t been a massive upward or downward movement since Bitcoin experienced a rally from $25k to the sub-$30k region last month.
Bitcoin raced to a weekly high of $30,291 late on Sunday but has since retraced its gains and is now trading below the $30k level once again. At press time, BTC is trading at $29,690 per coin, down by 0.6% in the last 24 hours.
Thanks to this poor performance, the total cryptocurrency market cap has also declined. At the moment, the total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1.19 trillion, down by nearly 1% today.
XRP, XLM, and LINK led the market charge last week, with each of them soaring by more than 20%. However, the cryptocurrencies have since cooled down their rallies and are all down by more than 1% in the last 24 hours.
There is no major catalyst pushing the market higher at the moment, with investors waiting for the latest interest rates decision from the United States Federal Reserve to determine the market’s direction.
While commenting on the Fed's next interest rate decision, Ruslan Lienkha, Chief of Markets at YouHodler, told Cryptowisser that;
"The Fed has two options for next week. First - raising the rate by 25 b.p. Second - leaving the rate at the current level. It will possibly choose the second one just to save space for further rate hikes in the fall. Also, the current situation is quite favorable for such a decision, as inflation slows down, but at the same time, the economy remains strong - it seems that the Fed is quite successful in keeping a balance between inflation control and mitigating the possibility of a recession."
Bitcoin's performance in the next few weeks could be determined by the Fed's next line of action. At the moment, Bitcoin continues to hold the major support level around $30k.
