Bitcoin continued its “ranging” behavior on August 11 as volatility gave way to a fresh corridor below $12,000.
Data from price trackers including CoinMarketCap showed BTC/USD adopting a new focal point around $11,700 after several days of intense activity.
In stark contrast to the start of the week, Tuesday delivered a calmer trading environment, with 24-hour price action between $11,970 and $11,600.
Bitcoin came off its best performance for over a year on Monday, with a sudden fall shaving $500 off spot price to confirm support at $11,500.
Gold wobbles after dramatic growth
At the same time, safe havens were in decline, with gold falling back below the psychologically significant $2,000 level.
The period of exuberance on the back of fiat weakness, which was exemplified by the decline in the US dollar and emerging currencies such as the Turkish lira, thus took a different turn as investor sentiment cooled.
For Bitcoin, correlation with gold in particular appeared to continue, with both assets taking a roughly 2% hit on the day.
“Back in April, the recent peak, the dollar’s real value was the highest it’s been in nearly 18 years,” Marshall Gittler, head of investment research at BDSwiss Group, said in a note late last week quoted by Bloomberg.
“That was the extraordinary move, not the recent decline.”
Fear & Greed Index worries but analysts remain bullish
As Modern Consensus reported, upcoming policy changes by the US Federal Reserve could yet serve to strengthen safe havens again in the form of a push to get inflation to between 2% and 4%.
Beneath the surface, Bitcoin’s technical fundamentals were once again picking up after a slight correction of their own.
Both network hash rate and difficulty remained stable at just below all-time highs, with the latest difficulty change on Monday pushing the metric up by 0.6%. Miner sentiment thus remained clearly skewed to the bullish side.
“This is one of the rare times when everyone seems to be bullish and it’s likely justified,” popular analyst Scott Melker summarized to Twitter followers.
Other metrics were not so optimistic. The classic Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which uses a basket of factors to measure whether the market is overly enthusiastic or bearish, headed higher into its “extreme greed” zone on Tuesday.
At 84/100, the Index was at its highest since June 2019, around the time when BTC/USD hit the height of its previous bull run at $13,800.
Faced with the choice, however, RT host Max Keiser believes that the firm investment outlet for anyone remains BTC.
“The scramble for #Bitcoin Gold, Silver is NOW,” he summarized on Twitter Monday.
“For many, you’ve one shot at surviving this fiat apocalypse taking the global economy down in 2020. Satoshi shined a light. Don’t blow it on (altcoins).”
Certain altcoins beat Bitcoin’s recent returns in recent weeks, but BTC’s market cap dominance stayed stable at just above 60%.
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July 25, 2018 -
