Despite having witnessed a relatively minor drop into the $6,200 region yesterday, Bitcoin has since recovered and is now sitting firmly in its long-established trading range. Bulls have been hard at work defending Bitcoin’s price from falling below $6,200, likely signaling that more sideways trading is ahead for the cryptocurrency.
At the time of writing, the entire cryptocurrency market is trading flat, with most major alt-coins trading up around 1%. Out of the largest alt-coins, XLM and XRP have been the highest performers over the past 24 hours, up 2.1% and 1.5% respectively.
The lack of movement in the markets can be attributed to dwindling daily trading volume in the cryptocurrency market, which is currently at just over $10.3 billion, down from its monthly highs of over $22.1 billion.Institutional Investors Don’t Care About Persisting Sideways Market
Despite there being a lull in the markets, a recent report from Grayscale Investments notes that there is a significant amount of institutional funding entering the cryptocurrency markets.
The report notes that Grayscale's institutional inflows for this year have totaled at $329.5 million, and that $81 million of this has entered in the past few months alone.
“Just as we saw in the first half of the year, the majority of capital this quarter came from institutional investors. This group’s share of new investment increased to 70% in Q3, though the dollar-value invested was lower than in the two previous quarters,” the investment firm said in their Q3 report.
The report also explained that in Q3 2018, 70% of investments into the company’s cryptocurrency products has been from institutions, followed by 11% from accredited investors, 18% from retirement accounts, and 1% from family offices.Analyst Claims Downward Break is Imminent for Bitcoin
While speaking about the lack of volatility in the cryptocurrency markets, Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at Think Markets U.K., spoke about how many traders are turning to retail stocks for greater volatility.
“The average true trading range of bitcoin has dropped to $157 from its January peak of $1,500. Its historical volatility has also dropped so low that stocks like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) are more attractive,” he said.
Aslam further added that Bitcoin’s slight downwards drift will, in his opinion, lead it to lower price levels:
“The price of bitcoin is moving towards a critical support level of $6,100 and a break of this is going to open the floor towards the $5,717 mark.”