Bitcoin’s (BTC) price slid below $44,000 near midday on Friday as the hype surrounding the launch of the first spot BTC ETFs in the U.S. has begun to fade, while the conversation has already begun to shift toward the approval of the first spot Ethereum (ETH) ETF by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Data provided by TradingView shows that Bitcoin bulls defended support at $46,000 throughout the early hours on Friday, but were overwhelmed by bears as midday approached, resulting in a decline to a daily low of $43,135.
BTC/USD Chart by TradingView
While the majority of tokens in the top 200 have recorded losses thus far, Ether, the second-ranked crypto by market cap, continues to push higher, establishing a new 20-month high of $2,717 near midday.
ETH/USD Chart by TradingView
A look at the ETH/BTC pair shows that Ether has significantly outperformed Bitcoin since January 9, when traders started to shift their focus to the top smart contract platform after it became clear that a spot BTC ETF approval was imminent.
ETH/BTC Chart by TradingView
"When our last report was published on Dec 21, Bitcoin was $43,000, Ethereum was around $2,200, and the total crypto market cap was $1.6 trillion,” said Rachel Lin, co-founder and CEO of SynFutures. “Today, we've seen a 10-20% increase in value on all these assets, and more importantly, we've witnessed a massive improvement in the fundamentals of our industry.”
“The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. is a seminal movement for Bitcoin and the entire Web3 ecosystem,” she said. “Creating an entirely new asset class will likely bring a significant capital inflow into the crypto market. Mainstream coverage of cryptocurrencies has changed so much that there are predictions of BTC reaching anywhere from $200,000 to $1,000,000 in the coming years.”
“The excellent news has propelled BTC to $47,000. The massive rally in the most prominent cryptocurrency will likely find some resistance between the 48,000 and 50,000 levels,” Lin said. “Within this range lies the previous resistance from 2022, the 61.8 Fib level for the entire bear market crash, and the psychological price of $50,000. All this will likely put pressure on Bitcoin, at least in the short term.”
“The ETH/BTC pair witnessed a sharp bounce back after briefly breaking below the crucial 0.05 level,” she said. “Bitcoin dominance has also broken below the uptrend line that acted as support since November 2022.”
Bitcoin dominance. Source: TradingView
“The altcoin's market cap broke above the 300–450 billion range it has been at for two years, and it even retested the previous resistance as support,” Lin said. “All of this points to the possible start of the alt season. Most of us couldn't have asked for a better start to the year."
