Bitcoin and Ether pull back from new all-time highs
02:58, 11 November 2021
Bitcoin and Ether prices fell in early Asia trade on Thursday after hitting new all-time highs overnight.
Bitcoin prices jumped to a record high of $69,044.77 in the last 12-hours, according to CoinGecko, after data showed that US consumer inflation surged to a 30-year high in October.
The bellwether cryptocurrency is seen as a hedge against inflation due to its capped supply of a maximum of 21 million units.
Bitcoin and Ether slip
On Thursday, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading 3.8% lower over the past 24-hours at $64,952.20. Ether (ETH) followed suit by dropping 2.8% to $4,616.92 after hitting a record high of $4,878.26 earlier, according to CoinGecko.
“Why the $BTC pullback from 68k? There was a massive increase in BTC margined futures open interest this afternoon (traders going long BTC with BTC as collateral). No free lunch - these traders are in the process of being shaken out,” tweeted Dylan LeClair, senior market analyst at UTXO Management, a digital fund investing platform.
Investors now look forward to big events next week with 14 November marked as the deadline for US Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to VanEck’s spot-based Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade is expected to be activated on 16 November.
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BTC Spot ETF and Taproot upgrade
“Anticipations on the SEC decision could be the primary reason for bitcoin’s strength in the recent days, with traders seeking to front-run the response, leading bitcoin to reach new all-time highs this week,” cryptocurrency research firm Arcane Research said in a note.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s upcoming Taproot upgrade will be its first major upgrade in four years, which is aimed at unlocking bitcoin’s functionality to run smart contracts.
“In short and at the highest level of abstraction possible, the Bitcoin Taproot soft fork will optimise scalability, privacy, and smart contract functionality,” Namcios wrote for Bitcoin Magazine. “Over the long term, upgrades like Taproot and Lightning might effectively render altcoins redundant and unnecessary.”
Alt-coins
Elsewhere, alt-coins Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) emerged as the biggest percentage losers among the top 10 cryptocurrencies in early Asia trade on Thursday, down 6.7% and 8.5%, respectively.
Among meme coins, Shiba Inu (SHIB) slumped over 10% to $0.0004885 in early Asia trade, while Dogecoin (DOGE) shed over 6% to $0.2569 on Thursday.
Binance Coin (BNB) was down 3.6% to $611.30, Solana (SOL) slipped over 2% to $235.38, Ripple (XRP) fell over 5% to $1.18 and Litecoin (LTC) declined 2% to $255.60 in early Asia trade on Thursday.
Read more: US inflation hit a 31-year high in October
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