Bitcoin Breaks Above $70k Once More
Bitcoin had a modest surge today, regaining the $70,000 mark by rising over 2% or $1,600 as of 7 PM ET. The world's largest cryptocurrency has successfully held its 20-day exponential moving average on a closing basis, despite bears' efforts to drag the price below this important technical indicator. Prior to today, that short-term moving average was tested on seven consecutive days, yet Bitcoin managed to close above it on each occasion, although it did dip below it intraday last Friday. However, today was the first day we saw Bitcoin clearly bounce from this average, opening at $68,810 and breaching $70,000 for the first time in two weeks.
Alt Coins to Watch
While news of spot Ethereum ETFs remains prevalent in crypto headlines, Ethereum has remained flat in its recent price action as Bitcoin slowly gains traction. Over the past three days, Bitcoin's dominance level has increased by over 1%, and today it broke out of a two-week range when its dominance traded above 54% for the first time in that period.
Solana, the number 5 crypto by market cap, is also trading up over 2% today after smashing through its own 20-day exponential moving average. It had been hovering around this average and the top of the cloud formation on a daily candlestick chart with an Ichimoku cloud overlay. Solana's cloud formation and candles' proximity to the Kumo (cloud line) closely resembles Bitcoin's own Ichimoku formation on a daily timeframe. This suggests that if Bitcoin continues to rise, Solana will likely accompany it.
Technically, Solana is very close to its resistance at $170, currently less than $1 away. If it can manage to close above that level, we will see continued bullish price action.
Another alt coin that has performed exceedingly well is Kaspa (KAS), a personal favorite. Over the past three days, Kaspa has gained 30% in value. The proof-of-work crypto has garnered attention this year due to its mining profitability and availability of small-scale ASIC miners for amateur miners (if you can source them, as they are often sold out). The coin dubbed "digital silver" is quickly approaching its previous all-time high of $0.19 seen last February. Currently, Kaspa sits about 7.5% below its ATH at nearly $0.18.
Kaspa utilizing most of Bitcoin's guidelines with a few changes that could be viewed as improvements. One notable change is the issuance rate; instead of new coins being cut in half every four years, Kaspa opted for a more gradual decrease in new coins issued, decreasing them monthly.
Its current mainnet operates at 1 block per second, with plans to increase this to potentially 10 or 100 blocks per second. Kaspa features a unique monetary policy called the chromatic phase, which reduces the block reward geometrically over time based on the 12-note musical scale. This policy activated on May 7th, 2022, with an initial block reward of 440 KAS. The block reward is halved annually, but smoothly, with a 1/12th reduction factor every month, mimicking the frequency ratio between consecutive semitones in a tempered chromatic scale. The initial reward corresponds to the frequency of the A4 note, and each averaged year is termed an octave.
Kaspa is now among the top cryptos by market cap, earning the 26th position with a market capitalization of $4.2 billion. Kaspa has also just completed one of the most promising bullish continuation candlestick patterns known as "three white soldiers" on its daily chart.