(Kitco News) - It was another quiet day of price action in the cryptocurrency market as a resumption in the uptrend for the DXY put pressure on global asset prices, with the major stock indices seeing red.
The overall weakness across financial markets was in part due to hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials on Thursday morning. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged that the risk of overshooting with rate hikes is real, but asserted that he and his colleagues were "quite a ways away" from bringing down inflation. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester echoed this sentiment by saying the U.S. is in an "unacceptably high" inflation environment.
As a result of the hawkish comments, the DXY notched a gain of 1.02% on the day to close at 112.2 and put the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq in the red for the day, down 1.02%, 1.15%, and 0.68%, respectively.
Data from TradingView shows that neither bulls nor bears were successful in their attempts to cause a notable trend change in the price of Bitcoin (BTC), with the top crypto trading largely within a range between $19,900 and $20,375.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The inactivity of the day was perfectly surmised in the morning Bitcoin brief from Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff, who simply stated that there is “not much new recently.”
“The bulls and bears continue to fight for near-term technical control, with neither gaining much ground,” Wyckoff said. “That means sideways and choppy trading. The bulls have heavy lifting to do in the near-term to suggest a price uptrend can be sustained.”
Futures open interest spikes
While the activity in the spot market has been subdued, the same cannot be said for the futures market, as futures open interest has spiked to a level just below its all-time high at 604k BTC.
As bitcoin consolidates around $20,000, BTC denominated futures open interest sits just below all time highs at 604k BTC.
— Dylan LeClair ?? (@DylanLeClair_) October 6, 2022
Whether up or down, when bitcoin breaks out of its current range, it'll likely be a violent move. pic.twitter.com/cYmSi7JLAX
Also notable about the surge in open interest is the fact that the “[percentage] of open interest that is bitcoin/crypto collateralized is at all time lows,” according to Dylan LeClair, senior analyst at UTXO Management, with the current open interest “mostly stablecoin margined – a welcomed change from bull market levels.”
Altcoins trade in a tight range
The vast majority of altcoins in the top 200 traded within 2% of their previous day's close in trading on Thursday.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Notable exceptions include Casper (CSPR), which climbed 21.8% on the day to trade at $0.0363, while Reef (REEF) gained 11% and SushiSwap (SUSHI) saw an increase of 9.76%.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $961 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 40%.
