Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week in a price range that frustrates traders and leaves little to the imagination — what next?

After precious little activity over the weekend, the largest cryptocurrency lacks direction, and even macroeconomic triggers have failed to shift the status quo.

At around 10% below the $30,000 mark, BTC/USD is treading water, and despite calls for a further correction, market participants are dealing with a tiny active trading range.

Liquidity is there to be taken above and below, but so far, only a tease of a liquidity sweep has materialized.

The coming days have some potential macro surprises in store, but analysts agree it will take a significant shift in the data to crack a stubborn Bitcoin.

Just a day after an attacker sparked community-wide panic after hijacking the Tornado Cash governance, a new proposal hints at the possible restoration of the state of governance.

On May 21, the passing of a malicious proposal allowed an attacker to gain complete control over Tornado Cash’s governance. With total control over the governance of the decentralized crypto mixer, the attacker was in a position to inflict massive losses considering they could withdraw all of the locked votes, drain all of the tokens in the governance contract and brick the router.

While the story unfolded, community member Tornadosaurus-Hex or Mr. Tornadosaurus Hex, took proactive steps to minimize the potential damages by publishing a subsequent proposal requesting all members to withdraw all funds locked in governance, as shown below.

However, Mr. Tornadosaurus Hex (Hex) was uncertain about the effectiveness of the new proposal considering the attacker’s grip over the mixer’s governance. A few hours into the hack, to everyone’s surprise, the attacker surprisingly reached out to the Tornado Cash community with a new proposal, hinting at their intent to give back the governance control.

As shown above, Hex communicated the attacker’s plan to the community stating that:

Inexperienced traders usually chase prices higher during the end of the bull phase as they fear missing out on the rally. However, institutional investors tend to wait for the froth to settle before entering. Bitcoin’s (BTC) bear market in 2022 ended the hype that was seen in 2021.

Fred Pye, CEO of 3iQ, Canada’s first Bitcoin fund issuer, said in an interview with Cointelegraph that as “the FOMO in Bitcoin is gone” institutional investors and portfolio managers have started to take a look at it as “a serious venue.”

While analysts are bullish for the long term, the short-term picture looks uncertain as the price is stuck inside a range for the past several days. Analysts expect a trending move to start either next week or the week after.

If Bitcoin breaks out to the upside, what are the altcoins that may follow it higher? Let’s analyze the charts of the top five cryptocurrencies that may rally in the short term.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin has been trading near the support line of the symmetrical triangle but the bulls have failed to push the price above it. This indicates that the bears are active at higher levels.

A bearish market structure has been pressuring cryptocurrencies’ prices for the past six weeks, driving the total market capitalization to its lowest level in two months at $1.13 trillion. According to two derivative metrics, crypto bulls will have a hard time to break the downtrend, even though analyzing a shorter timeframe provides a neutral view with Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and BNB, on average, gaining 0.3% between May 12 and May 19.

Notice that the descending wedge formation initiated in mid-April could last until July, indicating that an eventual break to the upside would require an extra effort from the bulls.

Furthermore, there’s the impending U.S. debt ceiling standoff, as the U.S. Treasury is quickly running out of cash.

Even if the majority of investors believe that the Biden administration will be able to strike a deal before the effective default of its debt, no one can exclude the possibility of a government shutdown and subsequent default.

Gold or stablecoins as a safe haven?

Not even gold, which used to be considered the world’s safest asset class, has been immune to the recent correction, as the precious metal traded down from $2,050 on May 4 to the present $1,980 level.