bitcoin traded steadily near $109,000 during Asian hours on Thursday, extending the wide play range since the Oct. 10 crash that wiped out $19 billion in leveraged bets and weakened risk sentiment.
Ether was around $3,850, with solar (SOL, and It has barely moved in the last 24 hours. The pause comes after a volatile start to October that has so far produced little progress for bulls and bears, and is on track to deliver the smallest gains for investors since 2015, despite being a seasonally bullish month.
The backdrop is as interesting as it is peaceful. The cryptocurrency market has been in what traders call “sell the growth mode,” where each small rally fades as liquidity dwindles and sentiment shifts.
The fear index has dropped to 25, one notch above “extreme fear.” Bitcoin has been oscillating between its 50- and 200-day moving averages for nearly two weeks, with each bounce selling off faster than the last.
Not even Google could move the market. The tech giant’s announcement of a “quantum advantage” with its Willow chip — a milestone that some say brings the world closer to practical quantum computing — briefly reignited old anxieties about Bitcoin’s cryptographic underpinnings.
The idea is simple: Quantum computers could one day crack the cryptography that keeps Bitcoin safe. In reality, that is still some way off, as discussed in December last year, but it is enough to remind traders how fragile trust can be when everything else seems tired.
Still, with uncertain macroeconomic signals and the Oct. 29 Federal Reserve meeting approaching, few are betting big in either direction.
“The market has been balancing in this tight range, and that indicates how close we are to a bigger move,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro. “Either the bulls lose patience or the bears run out of conviction.”
At this point, most traders are simply waiting for something to break, whether in price or narrative. Not even Google’s supposed quantum leap was enough to achieve this.
For a space built on speculation and narratives, indifference could be the most bearish signal of all.
