Altcoins take center stage as Bitcoin treads water near the $20K support

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(Kit­co News) – Alt­coins saw increased atten­tion from traders on Thurs­day thanks to sev­er­al notable announce­ments that helped entice cryp­to fans into the mar­ket despite the flat price action for both Bit­coin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

Social media plat­forms con­tin­ue to spark token ral­lies amid the cryp­to win­ter, with Poly­gon (MATIC) and Arweave (AR) the lat­est ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a high-pro­file inte­gra­tion as Meta revealed that both will play an instru­men­tal role in allow­ing Insta­gram users to mint and store non­fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs).

Aside from sev­er­al break­out coins, the wider cryp­to mar­ket, along with the tra­di­tion­al mar­kets, fell under pres­sure as traders remained cau­tious about div­ing back into the mar­kets fol­low­ing asser­tions by Fed­er­al Reserve Chair Jerome Pow­ell that hopes for a pol­i­cy piv­ot were “pre­ma­ture” fol­low­ing yesterday’s fourth con­sec­u­tive inter­est rate hike of 75 basis points.

Data from Trad­ingView shows that Bit­coin trad­ed in a nar­row­ing price range on Thurs­day, with bulls suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ing sup­port at $20,000 while bears have rein­forced resis­tance at $20,400.

BTC/USD 4‑hour chart. Source: TradingView

Accord­ing to Kit­co senior tech­ni­cal ana­lyst Jim Wyck­off, the side­ways price action has yet to con­firm a bear­ish out­look; “How­ev­er, a fledg­ling price uptrend on the dai­ly bar chart is now in jeop­ardy of being negated.”

As it stands now, “Bulls still have the slight over­all near-term tech­ni­cal advan­tage but need to show fresh pow­er soon to keep it,” Wyck­off warned.

A sur­vey of cryp­to Twit­ter sug­gests a sim­i­lar out­look, with many expect­ing one final drop to new lows in BTC before the next bull run kicks off.

$BTC / $USD – Macro update 

My main bias has not changed as i expect more con­sol­i­da­tion and one more drop to pro­duce a spring like motion to kick start the bull run pic.twitter.com/n0FYKxvtge

— Cryp­to Tony (@CryptoTony__) Novem­ber 3, 2022

Look­ing for­ward to 2025

Insight into what the future might hold for Bit­coin was offered by Finder.com, which pre­dicts that the side­ways action will con­tin­ue for the remain­der of the year. That being said, investors can look for­ward to 2025 as the top cryp­to “could see new heights not reached before.”

Accord­ing to Finder’s pan­el of 55 fin­tech and cryp­tocur­ren­cy spe­cial­ists, BTC will be worth $21,344 at the end of 2022 “before sky­rock­et­ing to $79,193 by 2025.”

While that num­ber is far below what many of the over­ly opti­mistic pre­dic­tions have been in recent years – with many call­ing for a $1 mil­lion BTC in the not-too-dis­tant future – it is more than three times the cur­rent trad­ing price, rep­re­sent­ing a respectable gain in anyone’s portfolio.

CoinS­mart Finan­cial CEO Justin Hartz­man is slight­ly less opti­mistic, see­ing a price of $17,000 by the end of the year and a spike to $75,000 by 2025.

“Bit­coin is suf­fer­ing due to exter­nal macro con­di­tions. My 2025 price pre­dic­tion will depend on the after­math of the halv­ing. If macro con­di­tions improve and the reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment gets bet­ter, then BTC price should be able to rise up,” Hartz­man said.

A major­i­ty of those sur­veyed (53%) believe that Bitcoin’s price will con­tin­ue to be cor­re­lat­ed with high-growth tech stocks. Despite the broad­er mar­ket drop and Bit­coin dom­i­nance falling below 40%, the major­i­ty of pan­elists (77%) still con­sid­er Bit­coin a store of value.

Over­all, 46% of pan­elists said it’s time to buy BTC, 44% remain neu­tral and 10% indi­cat­ed that it’s time to sell.

Alt­coins trend higher

It was a green day for the vast major­i­ty of tokens in the top 200 as prices bounced back from yesterday’s down­turn fol­low­ing hawk­ish com­ments from the Fed.

Dai­ly cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket per­for­mance. Source: Coin360

The biggest gain­ers on the day include Arweave (AR), which spiked 47.83% fol­low­ing the announce­ment of its part­ner­ship with Meta, a 44.4% price increase for Mask (MASK) and a 30.77% gain for OKB (OKB).

Tra­di­tion­al mar­kets fell under pres­sure after the Fed reit­er­at­ed its inten­tions to con­tin­ue to raise inter­est rates to com­bat infla­tion, result­ing in the S&P, Dow and Nas­daq all clos­ing in the red, down 1.06%, 0.46%, and 1.73%, respectively.

The over­all cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket cap now stands at $1.007 tril­lion, and Bitcoin’s dom­i­nance rate is 38.6%.