Bitcoin was within striking distance of $70,000 on Wednesday before retreating to around $68,300 in Thursday morning trading, a swing of nearly 5% from the session high to the overnight low of $67,700.
The move marks the strongest attempt to reclaim the $70,000 level since the Feb. 5 crash, but it failed to achieve a clean breakout.
The most interesting story was below. Altcoins outperformed across the board, with ether rising 8.5%, solana gaining 6.9%, cardano rising 10.8%, and dogecoin adding 8.3%. Bitcoin’s 4.3% gain was among the smallest in the top 10.
That type of divergence typically signals risk appetite returning to the edges of the market, where traders chase higher beta moves once they believe the worst of the selling is over.
“The wave of forced selling is starting to dissipate,” said Daniel Reis-Faria, CEO of ZeroStack, in an email. “Altcoins are once again outperforming and increasingly ahead of bitcoin. That tells me we’re seeing a rotation.”
The rebound came alongside a muted reaction to Nvidia’s quarterly earnings, which beat estimates but failed to sustain a rebound. Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.3% after the report, and Nvidia stock erased most of its post-earnings gains to rise just 0.2% in extended trading.
The world’s most valuable company expressed concerns about an overheated AI economy, tempering what had been a days-long rally in tech stocks.
Meanwhile, the macroeconomic context remains fragile for continued movement in crypto markets. Market maker Wintermute noted that cryptocurrencies have been losing ground along with tech stocks as capital shifts toward defensive and hard assets.
Crypto finance platform Matrixport flagged the stagnation in stablecoin supply as a “major headwind” for bitcoin, and on-chain data firm Glassnode expects broader liquidity to recover in six months at the earliest.
The short-term risk is simple. Data from Cryptoquant shows that sales have slowed on Binance, supporting the argument of a short-term rebound. Elsewhere, cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue warned that a break below $60,000 could open a move towards $50,000-$55,000 or even $47,000 if cascading liquidations accelerate.
The gap between the short-term bounce and the medium-term trend remains wide, and Wednesday’s rejection at $70,000 did nothing to close it.
