cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency week at a glance: Crypto miners looking for new home

The past week has been a roller-coaster ride for the cryptocurrency market. The top cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation ended the week with mild gains. Bitcoin hovered around $48,000 and ETH remained around $4000. Most of the other altcoins witnessed a large volatility with Bitcoin dominance going down to 40%. One of the largest competitors to Ethereum, Solana, had yet another bearish week after dropping more than 12%. The native token of Polygon networks, MATIC, witnessed a bump in the trading volumes. The token had been consolidating for quite some time. However, recent partnerships and integrations have caused a lot of activity in the token driving its price higher.

Technical analysis reveals that Bitcoin is forming a crucial double-top pattern on the weekly timeframe. This pattern is usually considered as a reliable parameter to predict a bearish momentum. The last time this pattern was observed, Bitcoin dropped by almost 35%. It could be another reason that is preventing traders from going long at current prices. Bears would naturally be more active at such moments.

Building on the DeFi ecosystem, popular crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that customers in over 70 countries are able to earn yield with their crypto holdings.

With a varying rate of interest, customers can opt in to earn DeFi yield through the DAI stablecoin. The holdings will then be deposited with Compound Finance, which is an “industry leading” DeFi protocol as per the exchange.

Earlier this year, the US SEC threatened to sue the exchange if it launched its yield-earning product called Lend.

Coming to macro events that impacted the cryptocurrency ecosystem this past week, China’s ban on crypto mining (again) miners made their way to different countries to continue their operations without any hitches. After finding safe haven in Kazakhstan, many miners are now looking for a new home as pushbacks from the government have started.

The government proposed a limit to the development of new mines of a total of 100 megawatts (MW) nationwide in October, setting an upper boundary for the potential of crypto mining growth in Kazakhstan. Many companies have simply left their hardware to set up shop in the US or Russia.

This comes after the minister of energy said in November that they wouldn’t cut the power to legally-operating mines.

Top 5 crypto gainers during the week:

Top 5 crypto losers this week:

(The author is Edul Patel, CEO & Co-founder, Mudrex. The views are his own.)