Bitcoin, the world’s largest and oldest cryptocurrency, traded sideways throughout the week as traders eagerly awaited the US election results and upcoming economic data as the next catalyst that would drive prices higher.
Meanwhile, several altcoins saw notable gains as some liquidity shifted into the altcoin market.
At the time of writing, many of the top 99 altcoins posted double-digit gains, with APE, RAY and SPX6900 securing the top ranks.
Cryptocurrency traders managed to push the overall market cap back above $2.4 trillion after it had dipped below this level earlier in the week.
Bitcoin bounced back above $68,000 after dipping to a weekly low of $65,441 on October 23, but it mostly held steady within a narrow range of $66,000 to $69,000 throughout the week.
Bulls briefly pushed the price to retest the $70,000 mark, but it has since eased back, now hovering above $68,400, marking a modest 1% gain over the past 24 hours.
Market experts agree that the next key events likely to spark momentum in Bitcoin’s rally are the upcoming personal spending report, set for release on October 31, and the jobs report on November 1.
Beyond these, all eyes are on the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision on November 7, just two days after the presidential election.
Despite Bitcoin’s sluggish movement, both whales and retail traders continued accumulating.
Data from IntoTheBlock showed negative exchange netflows, indicating more Bitcoin was withdrawn from exchanges than deposited over the past week.
Additionally, André Dragosch, Director and Head of Research for Europe at Bitwise, referenced Glassnode data showing an uptick in addresses falling into the “whale” category over the past few months.
Dragosch suggested that this increase could reflect anticipation of a new all-time high for Bitcoin.
Most of the analysts on X were pointing to the bigger picture, suggesting that the flagship crypto currency was primed to enter price discovery mode soon.
On a shorter time frame, pseudonymous analyst “Unknown Trader” observed strong resistance around the $69,000 mark.
Based on their insight, if BTC manages to break past the resistance and hold above $69350, the price could move higher towards $71300.
However, if Bitcoin fails to hold its current support levels above $68,000, multiple analysts anticipate a potential drop towards $65,000.
According to a chart shared by analyst “Mexican Whale,” Bitcoin encountered strong resistance after briefly closing above the $68,000 level, which turned out to be a false breakout.
The analyst suggests that this fake upward movement could lead to an aggressive downtrend if Bitcoin fails to maintain support above $68,000.
Should the selling pressure increase, the price may drop toward the $63,000 to $62,000 range, signaling a potential bearish reversal in the short term.
Prominent analyst Rekt Capital highlighted that if Bitcoin manages to close the weekly chart above $66,300, it would signal that the broader bull run remains intact, reinforcing the potential for continued upward momentum.
Here’s how the top gainers of the week performed:
ApeCoin
ApeCoin (APE) led the weekly gainers rising 69% over the past 7 days with its market cap standing at $881.5 million when wriitng.
Its daily trading volume was hovering over $669 million at press time.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Most of these gains came on Oct. 20 following the launch of the much awaited Layer-3 blockchain network ApeChain.
Following the news, the altcoin surged 132% from $0.75 to $1.74.
Another development that added to the rally was interoperability protocol LayerZero launching on ApeChain after the mainnet went live.
With this integration APE tokens are now interoperable across multiple blockchain further adding to its utility.
Raydium
Over the past week, Raydium (RAY) stayed on an uptrend, rising from $2.36 on Monday to $2.95 at the time of writing, having gained over 42%. The token was up 83% from this month’s low while its market cap was seated at $764 million.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The biggest push for RAY came as news broke out that the Solana-based decentralised exchange had surpassed Ethereum in-terms of daily revenue, a major feat according to many considering the size of the world’s largest altcoin. Per DeFiLlama, Raydium generated $3.4 million in fees, exceeding Ethereum’s $3.35 million on Oct. 21.
Another likely catalyst could be the launch of Circle’s Euro-backed stablecoin EURC on the DEX injecting a significant amount of liquidity.
SPX6900
SPX6900 (SPX) gained 23.2% over the past 7 days and 470% since the start of October with its price at $0.814 at press time. The altcoin’s market cap stood at $756 million while its daily trading volume was around $27.8 million.
Source: CoinMarketCap
SPX’s price rally can be attributed to its recent lisitng on decentralised exchange LogX’s perpetual trading market.
Further, the meme coin was also added to Wormhole, a crosschain protocol, which will allow traders to bridge SPX accross multiple blockchains, adding to its liquidity and opens up potential trading and staking oppurtunities.
Beyond these developments the token also enjoyed the broader hype around meme coins although some it peers like MOODENG and GME posted gains exceeding 100% in the past week.
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