Despite Bitcoin hitting a three-month high of $48,000 in late March, buyers’ appetite for risk seems to have been sapped Wednesday, April 4 as the price slipped back below $45,000.
For the last eight or so days, the price has been consolidating, after retesting the $45,000 support, before breaking lower on Wednesday. According to CoinGlass, in the last 48 hours, over $300 million has been liquidated in the crypto market with 110,880 traders being liquidated. The sell-off, which started on Tuesday, has seen bitcoin shed 5.37% of its value to trade at $43,539 as of writing with altcoins taking the most significant hit. The overall crypto market is down by over 7 percent in the week, currently sitting at $2.01 trillion.
Amid talks of the anticipated ‘Ethereum Merge’ filling the airwaves, ETH has lost about 7.41% of its value since Tuesday and is trading at $3,234 after slipping below the $3,300 support earlier yesterday.
Solana, Cardano, and Avalanche have seen the most extensive drops after shedding 4.96%, 5.57%, and 7.31% in the past 48 hours respectively as seen on CoinMarketCap.
Dogecoin’s gains on Tuesday after news that Elon Musk could integrate the cryptocurrency into Twitter after buying a stake in the social media behemoth seem to have been maintained as the meme coin has gained by 4.45% in the last 24 hours.
 
 
Wednesday’s sell-off comes even as Miami hosts the biggest Bitcoin conference this year. Apart from geopolitical reasons, the conference could be one of the main grounds for faltering markets, as some of the staunchest crypto enthusiasts and firms gather to pitch ideas and share various announcements.
It is, however, suffice to enunciate that BTC, ETH, ADA, SOL, LUNA are on the path to recuperation, mirroring the wave to other assets with major announcements expected to be made during the conference at hand, despite one of the key speakers, El Salvador president Nayib Bukele pulling out in the last hour.
Already, there has been positive news this week on Bitcoin such as MicroStrategy purchasing an additional 4,167 BTC as well as Terra’s continued accumulation of more than 5,000 BTC this week even as it seeks to oust Satoshi’s presumed holdings.
As earlier reported, a bullish reversal triangle may be on the horizon even after a retest of $45,000 failed to materialize, setting in a bullish flag pattern according to Gareth Soloway, the chief market strategist at InTheMoneyStocks.
“Downsloping parallel channels tend to break up, while upsloping channels tend to break down” Gareth has told Kitco recently citing the pattern below.
That said, most crypto traders could stay on the sidelines this week, with Bitcoin gaining notoriety for pulling unexpected moves previously, especially after such activity-filled weeks.