This Week In Crypto: Altcoins Gain, Bitcoin Breaks Above USD 52,000 Before Tapering

Market Update

Bitcoin briefly rose above USD 52,000 on Monday before tapering off. Altcoins such as Polkadot (DOT) and Cardano (ADA) were each up by more than 6% at one point on Monday morning.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading USD 49,379.40 (-2.99%) while Ethereum (ETH) is trading at USD 3,925.23 (-3.59%).

Trading Volume

Trading volume remains relatively low across major centralised exchanges.

The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $98.72B, which makes a 35.23% increase. The total volume in DeFi is currently $17.66B, 17.89% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $76.86B, which is 77.86% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.

According to Glassnode’s Dec. 27th newsletter, the sovereign supply of BTC (the total number of coins held outside of exchange reserves) has reached an all-time high. Long-term BTC holders saw their ownership stake increase to 74.8% of all sovereign supply, while short-term holders’ BTC ownership fell to 25.2% over the past year.

“Such on-chain behavior is more typically observed during bitcoin bear markets, which in hindsight are effectively lengthy periods of coin redistribution from weaker hands, to those with stronger, and longer-term conviction,” Glassnode wrote.

Fear and Greed Index

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index uses 5-6 measurements to assess the current sentiment of the market and then rates that level of emotion on a scale of 1 to 100 – 1 is extreme fear and 100 is extreme greed.

The current score is 41 (Fear), a significant increase from last week’s score of 25 (Extreme Fear). There might still be a buying opportunity for investors. Read the full assessment here.