Bitcoin is doing that familiar dance just below a big round number, $80,000, stalled by sellers even as fresh stablecoin liquidity, ETF demand and a risk-on equity market suggest the breakout may be delayed rather than denied.
The leading cryptocurrency briefly climbed above $79,000 during Asian trading hours before slipping back to trade below $78,000 recently. Over the past 24 hours, bitcoin has lost about 0.4%. Ether (ETH) has fallen 0.6%, XRP (XRP) is down 0.8% and Solana’s SOL has dropped more than 1%. Broader market benchmarks, including the CoinDesk Memecoin Index and Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index, were also under pressure, falling more than 1% each.
According to Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, the $80,000 level is acting as a near-term ceiling due to concentrated sell orders.
“Bitcoin has approached the $80K mark for the second time in the last few days, but has since experienced significant downward momentum. As it approaches this round figure, a build-up of sell orders is preventing the coin from moving further upwards,” he said in an email.
Still, Kuptsikevich argued the pullback appears temporary and consistent with a broader uptrend that began in late March.
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On-chain and ETF data offer support for that view. Crypto exchange Binance has recorded a net inflow of roughly $3.4 billion in stablecoins so far this month, following $3 billion in March, according to CryptoQuant data. That suggests fresh capital inflows, waiting for a entry point.
“This indicates an influx of new capital waiting to participate in the recovery,” pseudonymous CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost wrote on X.
Institutional demand remains strong. U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs have pulled in $2.44 billion in investor money this month, the most since October, when bitcoin hit record highs above $126,000.
But not everything is hunky-dory. Security risks in decentralized finance (DeFi) continue to weigh on sentiment. On Sunday, the SUI-based lending platform Scallop was exploited, resulting in the loss of roughly 150,000 SUI, or about $142,000. While small, it adds to a growing list of attacks this month, including the massive Drift and KelpDAO exploits.
Together, DeFi protocols have lost an estimated $623 million to hacks in April alone, according to Memento Research. Since inception, total losses from DeFi-related exploits have climbed to roughly $7.72 billion, according to data source DeFiLlama. This underscores a persistent structural risk for the sector.
In traditional markets, WTI crude oil prices continue to hover above $90 per barrel, with Brent above $100 as supply remains constrained. The latest pricing is significantly higher than $70 or below before the Iran war began in late February, and threatens to destabilize global economy with high inflation. Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
What’s trending
Today’s signal
The pie chart shows the breakdown of total losses suffered in crypto hacks by different methods of attack, including private key compromises, phishing exploits, access control issues and other smart-contract vulnerabilities.
Since inception, the biggest vulnerability has been private key compromises, accounting for 40% of the total.
Think of a private key as the master password to your crypto wallet. It’s a long, random string that proves you control your wallet and own crypto funds in it, allowing you to transact onchain. The issue, however, is that there is no reset password option if you lose the key.
So, once the hacker has it, you have lost your wallet and funds. This is known as the private key compromise and the fact that it’s the biggest security risk indicates that audits need to focus beyond just smart contracts.
