Crypto investors spent Thursday in a rangebound trance as Bitcoin (BTC) slogged below $30,000 and most major cryptos spent the day in negative territory. The exception was LINK, the native currency of the Chainlink software platform, which soared by more than 20% after whales acquired more than $6 million of the token.
The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index has fallen into neutral territory, indicating that investor sentiment for the asset has cooled recently. The metric, derived by Alternative.me, gauges investor sentiment across five distinct factors, and distills them into one number ranging from 0-100. Readings close to 0 indicate extreme fear, while readings closer to 100 indicate extreme greed.
There’s a lot of bearish sentiment on Crypto Twitter about this pullback, but I think the factors behind it are pretty simple, Anthony Georgiades, co-founder of NFT and Web3 blockchain Pastel Network, wrote in an email to journalists. Georgiades noted that the tech sell-off that was at least partly spurred by comments from Tesla founder Elon Musk that the electric car maker might have to reduce prices, and the strengthening dollar, had weighed on bitcoin and the broader crypto market.
Equity markets were mixed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average continuing a recent winning streak but the Nasdaq plummeting more than 2% on the Tesla news and soft earnings by streaming service Netflix. In a note to CoinDesk, Mark Connors, head of research at Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ, also highlighted missed results by Taiwan Semiconductor, which put an extra hit on AI stocks. The dollar index tipped downward to continue a recent trend.
Pastel Network’s Georgiades was cautiously upbeat about crypto markets. The underlying sentiment hasn’t changed much since yesterday or the preceding days, he wrote. I know the permabears have been calling for a major selloff, but it seems less likely that this is in the cards. He added: Monetary conditions are likely to loosen here soon, and that will help serve as a catalyst for risk-on assets.