(Kitco News) – Thursday’s trading was a mixed bag as Bitcoin continued to churn sideways in a relatively narrow channel while U.S. markets returned from Wednesday’s Juneteenth holiday only to see the broad indexes decline while the largest companies’ performances stole the show.
In equity markets, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq slid deep into negative territory during afternoon trading, but the former managed to recover before the close, while the latter was left far in the red. The Dow, for its part, remained strong throughout the trading session.
At the close, the S&P 500 finished marginally negative, losing 0.25% on the day, while the Nasdaq slid 0.79% and the Dow outperformed with a 0.77% gain.
Bitcoin whipsaws its way to nowhere
Bitcoin bulls were frustrated once again on Thursday as King Crypto slid below the $65k level after an overnight climb.
Data provided by TradingView shows that after opening the session just below $65,000 on Wednesday evening, BTC followed a now-familiar pattern, with a slow climb through the overnight punctuated by a spike just short of $66k around 3:15 am EDT and another to its session high of $66,455.50 at 7:30 am.
But the bulls once again ran out of steam, and the bears took over to put them out to pasture as they dropped Bitcoin to a daily low of $64,656.72 just after 10:30 am EDT.
The top cryptocurrency by market cap did manage to pull off the lows and back above $65k soon afterward, but it couldn’t rise higher than $65,147.75 in afternoon trading.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin last traded at $65,060.18 for a gain of 0.18% on the 24-hour chart.
VanEck spot BTC ETF live on Aussie ASX
Bitcoin did mark another milestone in its journey toward mainstream adoption by investors and institutions today as the VanEck Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (VBTC) began trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Thursday.
VBTC is the first spot Bitcoin ETF to be listed on the ASX. The ETF’s launch came after the ASX approved the product listing under the ticker VBTC on Monday. The ASX is Australia’s largest exchange, handling approximately 80% of the country’s equity trading.
The fund’s trading volume quickly surpassed A$1.5 million, or approximately $1 million, after only a couple of hours of trading on Thursday morning. VBTC acts as a feeder fund for the U.S.-based VanEck Bitcoin Trust, which seeded the Australian fund with an initial investment of A$985,000.
King Crypto ready for reversal
Analysts were seeing signs on Thursday that the bottom could be in for BTC and the top crypto may be preparing for another breakout.
Cubic Analytics founder Caleb Franzen said that despite their recent failures to breach resistance, Bitcoin bulls are doing a good job of defending key support, and he’s waiting for a break above the $66,000 level.
Quick dip below $65.5k, but seems like bulls are defending on the AVWAP from the June 18th lows.
This is where I'm watching to see if we can get a snap-back rally back above $66k (one-hour candles). pic.twitter.com/ve6JM09RNv— Caleb Franzen (@CalebFranzen) June 20, 2024
BecauseBitcoin CEO and founder Max said BTC and altcoins are continuing to do what they have done through every previous cycle.
“The top chart is $BTC, the bottom chart is $OTHERS.D,” he said in an X post this morning. “Think of $OTHERS.D as a gauge for how altcoins are performing. If it's moving up, alts are a better hold than $BTC. If it's moving down, $BTC is a better hold than alts.”
“As you can see inside of our red shaded areas - as $BTC is charging towards its previous cycle ATH, we typically see alts underperforming dramatically,” he noted. “In each of the previous two cycles, $OTHERS.D has dropped AGGRESSIVELY during this phase of the cycle; just like what's happening right now. Also notice the light blue dots... same market structure each time.”
“HTF market structure still looks solid here,” Max said. “I think what you're seeing right now is a tremendous discount before alt-season. Take it slow, but this type of PA & fear for altcoins is familiar. People will tell you that it's different, but here is the data. It is not currently different. I remain extremely long until presented with new evidence.”
And analyst Michaël van de Poppe believes BTC is bottoming in its current range, and expects a move higher in the medium term.
“#Bitcoin has likely bottomed in this area between $63-65K and finding itself in upward momentum,” he wrote in an X post. “As a result, #altcoins start to show more strength, as the Bitcoin dominance is going down.”
“The reversal is on the horizon,” he added.
Altcoins mixed but less volatile
The altcoin market was also mixed on Thursday, but the moves were less pronounced than in previous sessions with no rockets in the top 200 changing by more than 12% on the day.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Worldcoin (WLD) led the gainers with an increase of 11.82% on the 24-hour chart, followed by recent standout Fetch.AI (FET) which gained 11.29%, and SingularityNET (AGIX), which rose 9.46%.
zkSync (ZK) led the losers with a decline of -9.81%, followed by a -6.41% drop for Flare (FLR) and a fall of -5.57% for JasmyCoin (JASMY).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.36 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 54.15%, both virtually unchanged from Wednesday.
