It’s generally been a bloody 24 hours in the crypto market, particularly for many of the “layer 1” smart-contract coins that have been doing so well lately.

Overall, the total crypto market is down 5.2 per cent at US$2.065 trillion, while Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped 3.25% since this time yesterday, currently changing hands for US$44,358.

Source: Coin360.com

The crypto kingpin is, however,  still within the support range it needs to hold in order for a “bullish divergence” to play out, according to go-to crypto technical analyst Michaël van de Poppe, who believes the zone between US$43K and $44K needs to ideally remain intact.

For the bull case, he is looking for a BTC “higher low” above US$45K and then a clear breakout beyond US$47K.

In the more bearish scenario, Van de Poppe sees plenty of support in a band between US$38K and $40K.

Meanwhile, if things look bearish at all to Michael Saylor and his Bitcoin-investment compa… er, we mean business-intelligence company MicroStrategy, he sure wasn’t showing it today. But when does Bitcoin ever look bearish to Michael Saylor?

The CEO today revealed, via Twitter, that his firm has bought the Bitcoin dip. Yet again. Just another US$242 million or so they found at the back of the company sofa…

 

Several layer 1 projects level down

If their founders were only concerned about market cap and price, then today would be one to forget for many of the leading layer 1 smart-contract blockchains.

There have been several big dippers in this category today, including Ethereum (ETH) -7%; Cardano (ADA) -11.1%; Solana (SOL) -14.2%; Terra (LUNA) -11.6%; Avalanche (AVAX) -16.5%; Algorand (ALGO) -7%; Polygon (MATIC) -9.4%; Tron (TRON) -12.3%; Elrond (EGLD) -9%; EOS (EOS) -8%; and Fantom (FTM) -16.4%.

If there wasn’t such a widespread layer 1 plummet today, we’d be tempted to focus on Cardano’s newly released smart-contract capability as a “buy-the-rumour, sell-the-news” event. As it stands, that’s actually not so clear.

In fact, it almost seems like a non-price event given how the majority of its competitors have performed in the past 24 hours.

It’d be remiss of us not to mention a few noteworthy layer 1s somewhat bucking the trend today. And these include: Tezos (XTZ) – still going particularly well, up 11.4% over the past 24 hours; Cosmos (ATOM) +6.7%; and Polkadot (DOT) doing okay-ish, down just 1.8%.

 

Fake Walmart news puts Litecoin on the roller coaster

Litecoin (LTC), the crypto market’s first-ever altcoin, went on a bit of a ride today, surging 35 per cent on the back of supposed news it had partnered with US multinational retail giant Walmart.

According to a CNBC report, however, the partnership was debunked by a Walmart representative shortly after the (fake) press release announcing it was circulated. But not before CNBC, Reuters and several other media outlets had spread the news as fact.

To be fair to those outlets, though, the false press release was likely especially believable considering there’s been a fair amount of recent conjecture about Walmart looking into cryptocurrencies. The retailer, for instance, recently posted a job listing for an expert digital currency strategist.

The Litecoin chart today tells the story, dumping just as hard after its initial spike.

Nothing to see here… carry on…

 

 

 

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