Bitcoin has lost its market momentum. Meanwhile, the amount of cryptocurrency locked in decentralized exchange Uniswap was nearly doubled on Friday.
Bitcoin was only able to eclipse the $11,000 level briefly Friday before dropping to as low as $10,812 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase.Â
âMarkets are looking weak on drying-up liquidity on exchanges while BTC hardly managed to reach back above the $11,000 level and couldnât sustain it,â said Jean Baptiste Pavageau, partner at trading firm ExoAlpha.Â
Indeed, major USD/BTC exchange volumes are looking feeble, with Friday tallying a $211 million total so far while daily averages the past month have been $364 million.Â
Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at crypto brokerage Koine, is concerned stock markets are in for a correction, potentially hurting crypto as investors look to unload risky assets.Â
âI think equities are headed lower and if that happens digital assets will get sucked down, too,â Douglas told CoinDesk. âThe tech shares are too frothy,â he addedÂ
Stock markets globally were mixed to cap off the week:
Another factor crypto investors are tracking: Bitcoin dominance, a measure of its market capitalization as a percentage of total cryptocurrencies. September has seen bitcoin hit 2020 dominance lows, hovering around 60% Friday.
âSo far, bitcoin dominance has largely been sliding downwards since the beginning of 2020,â said Andrew Tu, an executive at crypto quant trading firm Efficient Frontier. âIt will be interesting to see if we see a short-term reversion of the bitcoin dominance back upwards.âÂ
ExoAlphaâs Pavageau says decentralized finance, or DeFi, is captivating the crypto market, and that is causing weakness for bitcoin.
Read More: This DeFi Group Wants to Bring Maturity to the Yield Farming Craze
âThe market is focused on DeFi. It seems that locking value is also draining liquidity from exchanges as traders are noticing higher slippage when executing in the market,â Pavageau said. âA question to ask might be: Is the total value locked a threat to market liquidity for active traders?â
Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down Friday, trading around $379 and slipping 2.3% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).Â
The amount of cryptocurrency âlockedâ in decentralized exchange Uniswap has crossed $1.5 billion for the first time since Sept. 7. Investors have been quickly plowing crypto into Uniswapâs smart contracts over the past 24 hours, an 80% increase in value locked for that time period.
The dynamics of Uniswap have changed due to the decentralized exchangeâs decision to release its own token, known as UNI, said Brian Mosoff, chief executive officer for investment firm Ether Capital.
Read More:Uniswapâs Newly Launched UNI Token Has Already Doubled in Price
âUsers are likely locking ETH into Uniswap because they want to farm the $UNI token,â Mosoff said. âMany crypto users see Uniswap as the category leader, and rightfully so given the team and its backers. Users want to participate financially in the growth of the platform.â
Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mixed Friday, mostly in the red. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
Read More: Uniswapâs $5B Token Valuation Cements Comeback From âVampire MiningâÂ
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