Bitcoin Rises to $11,050 Per Coin on Friday

Bitcoin rose above $11,000 per coin on Saturday after weeks of trading in a range, between $10,867 and $10,960 despite liquidity drying up across exchanges.

The cryptocurrency most dominant coin gained 1.67 percent to settle at $11,050 per coin as at 8.04 pm Nigerian time on Saturday.

“Markets are looking weak on drying-up liquidity on exchanges while BTC hardly managed to reach back above the $11,000 level and couldn’t sustain it,” said Jean Baptiste Pavageau, partner at trading firm ExoAlpha.

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.

Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at crypto brokerage Koine, said he is concerned that stock markets are about to start correction that could potentially hurt crypto as investors look to unload risky assets.

“I think equities are headed lower and if that happens digital assets will get sucked down, too,” Douglas told CoinDesk. “The tech shares are too frothy,” he added

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.

“So far, bitcoin dominance has largely been sliding downwards since the beginning of 2020,” said Andrew Tu, an executive at crypto quant trading firm Efficient Frontier. “It will be interesting to see if we see a short-term reversion of the bitcoin dominance back upwards.”

Pavageau of ExoAlpha explained that Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is captivating the crypto market, and that is causing decline in bitcoin.

“The 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,” Pavageau said. “A question to ask might be: Is the total value locked a threat to market liquidity for active traders?”