First Mover Americas: BTC Dips Below $24K as Ether Holds Strength

• Price Point: Ether gains as BTC struggles and dogecoin surges overnight ahead of its "Dogechain" launch. Huobi Global announced it will stop offering derivatives trading services to users in New Zealand.
• Market Moves: Could a BTC bottom indicator have marked a price bottom for the cryptocurrency?
• Chart of The Day: A risk reset in equities contributes to ether rally.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Price point

After failing to maintain the $25,000 mark on Monday, bitcoin (BTC) dropped to a low of $23,788 overnight. Perhaps that indicates that bitcoin’s two-month rally has ended.

Meme token dogecoin was up 15% over the last 24 hours. Crypto investor Lark Davis said that the token is rallying ahead of the launch of Dogechain, which requires wrapped doge for trading.

Ether (ETH) was up slightly on the day, trading at about $1,900. According to a report from research firm FSInsight, ether has a good chance of exceeding bitcoin in market cap over the next 12 months because the Ethereum blockchain’s switch to the proof-of-stake mechanism will reduce the production of the tokens and selling pressure from miners.

A report from CoinShares showed that crypto funds had $17 million in outflows in the seven days up to Aug. 12, ending six consecutive weeks of inflows. Bitcoin investment products saw $21 million in outflows, and short bitcoin positions, which bet on a price decline of the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, had $2.6 million in inflows.

Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global announced it will stop offering derivatives trading services to users in New Zealand starting next week, just a couple of months after it expanded operations to the country. The Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange cited "local compliance policies" as the reason for withdrawing margin trading services, options and exchange-traded products.

Celsius Network, a crypto lender that filed for bankruptcy in July, appears to be in even worse financial straits than previously signaled. A court filing Monday from Kirkland & Ellis, a law firm the crypto lender hired to lead its restructuring efforts, included financial projections that Celsius will run out of cash by October.

In Latin America, Brazil’s largest brokerage, XP, launched bitcoin and ether trading. The company, which has 3.6 million customers, hopes to reach 200,000 active crypto users by the end of this year.

Biggest Gainers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Dogecoin DOGE +16.0% Currency Gala GALA +1.6% Entertainment Cosmos ATOM +1.6% Smart Contract Platform

Biggest Losers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Solana SOL −0.7% Smart Contract Platform Terra LUNA −0.6% Smart Contract Platform Bitcoin BTC −0.3% Currency

Market Moves

Is This the Most Reliable BTC Bottom Signal?

The Puell Multiple, a bottom signal for bitcoin, sits at 0.54, and values under 0.50 have historically marked price bottoms and are considered to be good accumulation zones.

The indicator fell to 0.34 in July, which was its lowest level since 2019, according to data from Delphi Digital.

The Puell Multiple is the daily issuance of BTC (in USD) divided by the 365-day moving average of the daily issuance of BTC (in USD). It compares the short-term revenue of BTC miners to its longer-term trend. A lower score equates to lower revenue for miners.

Since 2014, the Puell Multiple has gone below 0.50 only four times, including during the previous market bottoms of 2015 and 2019, the COVID 19-induced crash of spring 2020 and the market downturn last month, according to Delphi Digital.

Delphi Digital notes that even as the Puell Multiple seems to indicate a market bottom, other indicators must be used in tandem to conduct a meaningful analysis.

Chart of the Day

Risk Reset in Equities Contributes to Ether's Rally

by Omkar Godbole

• The chart tweeted by pseudonymous analyst Cantering Clark shows ether's recent rally has been accompanied by an uptick in the S&P 500, Wall Street's benchmark equity index.
• Perhaps, the Merge is not the only factor driving ether higher, and the native token of Ethereum's blockchain may find it hard to continue gaining ground in the weeks ahead if stocks turn lower.

Latest Headlines

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