Cryptocurrency Market Pauses After Recent Gains, BTC, BAT, USDT, LAMB Apr. 15

Coins and Tokens 3 min, 52 sec READ

by Kevin George

Crypto market pauses from recent strong gains. USDT faces manipulation accusations. LAMB bounces into the top 100 coins.

BTC

The cryptocurrency markets have pulled back from their recent strong gains with a healthy correction to technical support levels. The pullback was led by Bitcoin, which has retreated to test the 9 moving average and is holding the $5,000 level at $5,165. 

The move on the weekly chart shows that the market has crawled off the lows of mid-December and rallied to test the moving average. This week of consolidation will set the stage for the next path ahead and a daily close above $5,300 could see the market make a move to the key $6,000 level, which provided stubborn support before the last sell-off and there is likely a lot of stop orders above that level, which could spark another short-covering rally higher.

The overall market cap has slipped to $175 billion so we will wait and see if the market can push to test the $200 billion mark once more. Many of the top coins have exceeded the -1.25% loss of BTC with up to double digit losses, however many of those coins put in a stronger rally and they currently lack the volume to hold onto the gains when the market cools. With a current market cap of $91 billion, we could see BTC make a push for the $100 billion level soon.

BAT

The Los Angeles Times has signed up to the Brave Browser’s verified publisher ranks and will now start receiving tips in BAT. The LA Times is the fourth-largest newspaper in the United States. Other publishers that have already signed up are the UK’s Guardian and the Washington Post. It would be worth noting that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns the latter publication and it’s possible that he was involved in the decision to sign up to Brave. 

The browser’s rewards allow content creators to receive income without using ads. Website readers who use the Brave Browser set a “monthly contribution amount,” in Basic Attention Token (BAT), which is then shared between the sites they visit most. The global spend in advertising was over $500 billion in 2018 so BAT’s market cap would benefit from a shift in marketing strategies towards a tip reward system, which would also provide further income for newspapers who have seen a continued decline in physical newspaper sales.

BAT has a market cap of $380 million and holds the number 25 spot in the list of coins. The price of $0.30 is testing the higher-end of recent resistance levels and the market will be eyeing a move to $0.50, which the market last tested 12 months ago. Buying up some BAT tokens at these levels may allow access to valuable news subscriptions in the future if the market cap grows.

USDT

Tether has been facing accusations of malpractice once again after issuing more than $400 million in USDT in the last week. The supply increase has once again brought the backing of the largest stablecoin into question. USDT is involved in the valuation of billions of dollars of crypto assets and the previous drop in USDT saw a BTC rally. Investors have long-held doubts over the company’s claim that USDT is backed “one-to-one” versus the US Dollar. The US Justice Department even launched an investigation in late-2018 to investigate the manipulation claims. 

USDT currently trades at $1 exactly after recovering from its previous dips. Any fallout from the claims of manipulation could create real volatility in the crypto markets as USDT currently sees volumes of around $11 billion dollars a day, the second-largest after Bitcoin.

LAMB

Moving onto the altcoin market and Lambda is a project that has seen a surge in value over the last two weeks with a tenfold price rise.

Lambda focuses on the market for decentralized data storage, where they provide a storage space rental service, which utilizes IoT for data integrity and security. The move higher in LAMB has seen it break into the top 100 coins at number 94 with a market cap of over $58 million. 

LAMB currently has a circulating supply of 500 million coins, however, the coin has a max supply of 10 billion so there is an inflationary aspect to consider down the line when investing here. Despite that, the recent move should attract some attention and we may see further gains for the project. LAMB's recent high around $0.15 will be the first target and a daily or weekly close above could signal that another move higher is underway.