Bitcoin notched a fresh five-month high last week with the price above $22,800 currently. The price consolidation hasn’t ended yet with the RSI back down from the overbought zone. Bulls seem unable yet to muster enough support for another impulse up. If bears manage to gather more support it is likely they may wrestle the control away from bulls in medium term unless market sentiment improves drastically again.
Markets retreated last Friday as unexpectedly strong January US jobs report pointed to continued vigor of US labor market and lent more support to views that the Federal Reserve may continue rate hikes most of his year before policy makers decide it is time to pause and think of rate cuts again. It will take more time to see how the biggest economy of the world actually fares as investors await more data on global economy’s response to monetary tightening by major central banks. Meanwhile blockchain data indicate investors hold on to their crypto investments during the recent bear market while India's Reliance Retail announced it now accepts digital Rupee, and independent examiner claims the bankrupt Celsius Network used new customer funds to pay for other customers’ withdrawals.
Bitcoin's HODL Waves indicator created by Unchain Capital shows that the percentage of unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) older than five years has increased by 17% in the past six months, according to Glassnode. UTXO is the amount of cryptocurrency someone has after executing a transaction. This rise in the percentage of UTXOs older than five years indicates some investors are maintaining their coin holdings during the market downturn.
India's Reliance Retail, one of India's biggest retailers is working with Innoviti Technologies and payment partners Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank to join in the pilot to use a digital rupee to pay for purchases. A senior official working on the pilot told that "from Reliance, Indian Oil, Cafe Coffee Day to roadside fruit sellers and tea vendors " are now set to use the digital rupee, according to CoinDesk.
An independent examiner asked by the court to offer an outside view of the crypto lender operations says Celsius Network misled its investors. He claims that the crypto lender which declared bankruptcy in July 2022 “did directly use new customer deposits to fund customer withdrawal requests” – the usual definition of a Ponzi scheme, where promised returns can't be sustained from genuine market performance.
