Bitcoin tests $39,000 in push toward high end of trading range

Bitcoin fluctuated near $39,000, testing the high end of the range that the largest cryptocurrency has traded in for much of this year.

Crypto assets, just like other riskier areas of the market, have all been weighed down as the Federal Reserve and other global central banks raise interest rates to fight red-hot inflation. In this environment, Bitcoin hasn’t been able to break out in any meaningful way beyond the highs it came into the year with.

Bitcoin rose as much as 3.4 per cent to $39,055 in early New York trading. The digital currency swung within a 5 per cent band for the previous seven trading sessions in a prolonged calm not seen since January 19.

Bitcoin continued to mirror US equity futures, which rose slightly as investors braced for the biggest Fed interest rate-hike since 2000 and awaited more clues on how aggressively it will tackle inflation.

Meanwhile, data from CoinGecko shows that the price of ApeCoin, the native crypto token of Yuga Labs’ APE ecosystem, rallied 17 per cent intraday Wednesday after Elon Musk changed his Twitter display picture to that of a collage of Bored Apes.

Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of NFTs, had recently auctioned virtual land on ‘Otherside’, its metaverse project.

The sale raised netted Yuga $320m but also led to huge congestion and high transaction fee on the Ethereum network over the past weekend.

The token price of ApeCoin fell from its Sunday highs of $22 to $14.50 per token on Wednesday before jumping to $17.16 after the Tesla CEO changed his profile picture.