Market Wrap: Bitcoin fluctuates at $ 36.4K, while Ether flies to over $ 1.4K

Trading in the bitcoin market slowed down on Tuesday, while the ether price broke new ground.

Bitcoin’s price remained in a rather narrow range on Tuesday, spending most of the U.S. trading hours between $ 36,200 and $ 37,200. At around 15:00 UTC (11 am ET), the price reached a high of $ 37,876 before falling and was at $ 36,483 at the time of publication.

“It is interesting yesterday that bitcoin kept its price in a quiet US market with the [Martin Luther King Day] holiday, ”noted Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank. “It also suggests that US customers, both retail and institutional, are very important.”

Read More: Bitcoin price is expected to exceed $ 40,000 to stop the exodus of traders: JPMorgan

“We had two failed attempts to break and go over $ 40,000, but we saw that at $ 20,000 and $ 30,000 as well,” said Thomas. “I suspect that we will get $ 40,000 in the next two days.”

In the meantime, as prices remain less volatile than before, traders appear to be increasing the risk.

“It seems that while bitcoin is being squeezed between an ever smaller range of $ 34,000 to $ 38,000 last week, the market is more leveraged in the long run,” noted Cindy Leow, portfolio manager at multi-strategy trading company 256 Capital partners .

According to the data aggregator Skew, the leveraged financing in the main locations remains high. Kraken, in particular, showed a high degree of volatility in financing rates, but on Tuesday he is offering the maximum for crypto holders to provide liquidity for long leverage, at 0.0471%.

“We see this as a short-term low, indicating that many market participants are looking forward to a bullish breakout,” added Leow. “In addition, sellers seem exhausted and the market is very dollar-free with foamy stable USD / currency loan rates.”

According to DeFi Pulse, loans in the decentralized finance market, or DeFi, exceeded $ 12 billion, with stablecoin Maker dai (DAI) taking over 39% of that share. Dai currently makes $ 4.7 billion from the DeFi loan market, up more than 11% on Tuesday.

Part of that DeFi spike also comes from the increase in the price of ether, which had a sudden rise on Tuesday, while bitcoin remained relatively quiet. “Ether is looking really strong and I think we are now entering a race between $ 2,000 ETH and $ 50,000 BTC,” said Thomas, of Swissquote.

“We see ETH likely facing some resistance at its historic high, similar to how BTC was initially rejected in November 2020 at its previous high of $ 19,000 before resuming an upward trend,” said Leow of 256 Capital.

Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, rose on Tuesday, trading around $ 1,384 and rising 12.7% in 24 hours from 21:00 UTC (4:00 pm ET) .

The cash price of ether hit a record high on Tuesday, rising to $ 1,439 and only surpassing its previous high of $ 1,432.88 set on January 13, 2018.

Read More: Ethereum’s Ether Cryptocurrency Reaches New Higher Prices Near $ 1,440

George Clayton, managing partner of the crypto fund Cryptanalysis Capital, questions the fundamentals behind the rise of the ether, while bitcoin seems unrelated to the rise of ETH. “Interesting price,” Clayton told CoinDesk.

He noted that average rates on the network generally increase with these prices, which actually undermines usability. Ethereum’s DeFi projects are more expensive to use during prices because processing fees, or “gas” in increments of ether, are required for their use.

“With rates at astronomical levels, Ethereum is becoming sclerotic and exclusive,” added Clayton. “I hope ETH 1.5 and the rollups will relieve the pressure a little.”

The digital assets in CoinDesk 20 are mostly green on Tuesday. Notable winners from 21:00 UTC (16:00 ET):

Read More: Janet Yellen says cryptocurrencies are a ‘concern’ in terrorist financing