Bitcoin price drops after reaching $ 50,000, market rebounds unevenly

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, remains near $ 49,000 after failing to break the all-important $ 50,000 threshold. Bitcoin price was down slightly at press time, trading at $ 48,281.

BTC / USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView

The Bitcoin price rarely fluctuates, there are only three days until Christmas

The hashrate is hitting a six month high and miners are sticking to BTC. Since we have more short than long positions, there could be a short squeeze before the $ 24 billion option expires on December 31st. The estimated leverage has increased near this value.

While BTC hasn’t seen much activity lately, tokens associated with the Layer 1 protocol and scaling system, including MATIC and LUNA, became market stars on Wednesday. These two coins have made strong gains in 30 days despite the recent general market sell-off.

MATIC’s price hit a record high early Wednesday after popular decentralized exchange Uniswap announced the launch of Polygon, a protocol that offers lower transaction costs compared to the Ethereum blockchain.

Ether is also red, but not far from its starting point. Small price movements in Bitcoin and Ether are accompanied by persistently low trading volumes on the large centralized exchanges when the market enters the Christmas break at the end of the year.

Nearby, they rose 23% to $ 10.80 on Wednesday after developers announced integration with the Terra decentralized payment network last night. In the immediate vicinity, it was trading at USD 8.6 on the Tuesday evening before the announcement. The tokens traded in a tight range of $ 8.5 and $ 9.5 before breaking through the second resistance on Wednesday morning.

The altcoin market has rallied unevenly today. The total capitalization of the crypto market is $ 2.268 trillion and bitcoin dominance is 40.3%.