BTC Narrative to Unfold in Next Few Days; Google Forms Web3 Team

Chart of the Day





The broader crypto market has had a very rough weekend indeed. On Sunday, BTC plummeted below the $35K level for the first time since January of this year after a broader sell-off occurred within the U.S. stock markets. As of the time of writing, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap has continued its downwards slide, and is now trading below the $33.5K level after posting a 2.4% loss in the last 24 hours. A key bearish trendline has formed on the BTC hourly chart, with the upper bound sitting near the $34.2K level. The next major support level for BTC sits in the $32.5K zone, and its price may plunge further if said level buckles under the immense selling pressure and increasingly bearish sentiments. 

Historically, the on-chain realized price for whales has served as a strong support level for BTC in dire times. However, these support levels may sometimes still fail in the face of deteriorating macro conditions, and BTC's spot price would cross over said support from above to reach a long-term bottom during a bearish cycle. In the next few days to come, we will see which narrative will unfold. 

In a similar vein to BTC, ETH has moved below the $2,500 level after shedding 3.6% of its market value overnight. Most major altcoins are also submerged in a sea of red, with the exception of NEAR and TRX, both of which have managed to pull off some decent gains amidst the general pessimism that is currently plaguing the broader crypto market.





Back to (the) Futures





Seemingly unconvinced by the weakening spot price, many leveraged traders are still betting long. The funding rates across major exchanges also experienced an uptrend over the weekend, whilst the BTC futures basis has been treading slightly above its multi-month lows. Within the options market, the volatility level of short-term options has risen significantly on the back of the U.S. Federal Reserve's hawkish rate hikes. In fact, its volatility curve has even surpassed that of the far-month's, indicating a sharp increase in short-term risk aversion.



Talk of the Town





Three months after Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. announced its plans to foray into the web3 world, Google's cloud computing unit has also established a team dedicated to back-end services for developers creating web3 applications. This move is aimed at tapping into the "tremendous potential" that web3 and crypto-related technologies have demonstrated in recent times, so as to make the Google Cloud Platform the first choice for developers in this field. Moving forward, Google will be devising a system that will render blockchain data more accessible to the masses, whilst also simplifying the process of building and running blockchain nodes.