Most major tokens entered green territory on Thursday, with altcoins taking the spotlight for recording the most gains. Previously on Wednesday, most tokens experienced a downturn after Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell had announced that it was unlikely for the central bank to pause interest rate hikes.
Arweave (AR) saw a 47.83 percent increase after announcing a new partnership with Meta. Mask (MASK) reported a 44.4 percent price increase, while OKB (OKB)’s gain on Thursday was 30.77 percent.
Data showed that BTC traded in a narrow range on Thursday. It failed to go past $20,400 but remained above its support point of $20,000. Reading from the derivatives market indicated weakness in BTC’s current support. However, Professional crypto traders said they were optimistic about the market and did not expect a negative move in BTC’s price chart.
Jim Wyckoff, a senior technical analyst at Kitco, confirmed that a narrow trading range was not necessarily an indicator of a future bearish trend. The overall crypto market capitalization was $1.007 trillion, with BTC controlling 38.6 percent of the market.
“However, a fledgling price uptrend on the daily bar chart is now in jeopardy of being negated,” Wyckoff added.
$BTC / $USD - Macro update
— Crypto Tony (@CryptoTony__) November 3, 2022
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
Social media platforms have attempted to start token rallies during the crypto winter. Like Arweave, Polygon (MATIC) also integrated itself into Meta. According to Meta, the two protocols will be instrumental in accommodating the minting and storage of NFTs on Instagram.
Aggressive rate hikes loom over crypto, stock markets
The situation in the traditional stock market was not as promising, with prices plunging for the fourth consecutive day. The Dow lost 0.46 percent, the S&P 500 took a 1.06 percent plunge and the Nasdaq slipped 1.73 percent.
The crypto and traditional markets continued to face pressures as investors were worried about investing money over the fear of more hawkish rate hikes in the future. Risk assets like crypto are especially vulnerable to a strengthening in the U.S. dollar, to which these tokens are traded.
Despite predicting a 50 basis points hike in December before the most recent FOMC meeting, a number of investors already prepared for another three-quarter of a percentage point hike. Economists have also predicted that the U.S. economy will enter a mild recession in the coming months.
Future of BTC
Analysts have predicted that BTC will “see new heights not reached before” in 2025. Finder’s panel, which consists of 55 fintech companies and crypto experts, predicted that BTC would be worth $21,344 entering 2023 and jumped to $79,193 by 2025.
Justin Hartzman, CEO of CoinSmart Financial, disagreed that BTC would remain above $20,000 by the end of this year. He predicted that BTC would be at $17,000 per unit ahead of 2023. However, he said that the token would see a spike in price by 2025, reaching $75,000 per unit. Hartzman added that his prediction could change because BTC was influenced by “external macro conditions.”
“My 2025 price prediction will depend on the aftermath of the halving,” Hartzman said. “If macro conditions improve and the regulatory environment gets better, then BTC price should be able to rise up.”
Seventy-seven percent of Finder’s panelists said they still believed in BTC’s ability to hold value, although its market control had reduced below 40 percent. Forty-six percent of the panelists also said it was the right time to purchase BTC.