Bitcoin opened the week with another failed attempt to break through a key psychological level at $60,000, and has been trading steadily near $59,000.
Bitcoin’s spot trading volume on eight major crypto exchanges tracked by CoinDesk was around $2 billion on Monday, mostly unchanged from the prior day.
Meanwhile, bitcoin’s 30-day volatility has also dropped, to near 56%, a level not seen since the beginning of the year.
The oldest cryptocurrency is now trading in “a consolidation phase,” as CoinDesk’s Damanick Dantes wrote earlier Monday, with initial support around $56,000.
The market chatter Monday was on neither bitcoin nor ether, but on multiple alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins), where price rallies helped pushed the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies to $2 trillion.
Tokens including bittorrent (BTT), tron (TRX) and tezos (XTZ) have all logged double-digit percentage gains in the past 24 hours as investors and traders seek lucrative returns from small-cap tokens, along with the higher risks.
“Bitcoin’s price has stabilized between $55,000 and $60,000, creating a bullish market environment that encourages investors to explore other cryptocurrencies in the market,” Steve Ehrlich, CEO and co-founder of Voyager Digital, said. “This has coincided with the fall of bitcoin dominance, a leading trend indicator of what market cycle we are actively in.”
According to TradingView, bitcoin’s market dominance is down to around 57% from near 73% at the beginning of the year.
Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly in green Monday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
