Bitcoin, Ethereum Move Higher, Dogecoin Flounders — Why The Market Is Far From Anticipating A 'Wild Bullish Impulse'

Bitcoin and Ethereum traded higher on Monday evening as the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 1.1% to $2 trillion.

See Also: How To Buy Bitcoin (BTC)

Why It Matters: The dollar index rose to a two-week high on Monday as concerns regarding a Russian invasion of Ukraine intensified. The index at one point touched 96.4410, which is the highest since Feb. 1, according to a Reuters report.

St. Louis Federal Reserve President Jim Bullard repeated his hawkish stance on Monday in an interview with CNBC.

“I do think we need to frontload more of our planned removal of accommodation than we would've previously,” Bullard said. “We've been surprised to the upside on inflation.”

Bullard had previously called for a full percentage point of interest rate hikes over the next three policy meetings of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasuries rose by 3.6 basis points to 1.988% after Bullard’s comments, according to a separate Reuters report. 

Despite the hike in Treasury yields in a choppy trading session, things were more stable on the Bitcoin side.

“Bitcoin appears to be stabilizing, which is good news considering how significantly Treasury yields are rallying,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst with OANDA.

Bitcoin futures traders are protecting themselves against uncertainty. Glassnode said in a blog post that across all exchanges they track, the futures term structure has flattened out through to March, which is parallel to the expected rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

“This speaks to a clear investor uncertainty regarding the wider economic impact of a tighter US dollar, given the preceding decades of loose monetary policy,” wrote Glassnode.

“Futures out to the end of 2022 are currently trading with a very modest 6% annualized premium, suggesting the market is quite far from anticipating a wild bullish impulse any time soon.”

Evidence of this de-risking can be seen in the increase in put options compared to call options, according to Glassnode.

Bitcoin Options Open Interest Put/Call Ratio On The Deribit Exchange — Courtesy Glassnode

Meanwhile, with Ethereum below the $3,000 level, demand for transactions in that cryptocurrency has been relatively muted and transaction fee has slipped to the lowest since July 28, 2021, Santiment noted.

With #Ethereum dropping back below $3,000, the demand to make $ETH transactions has stayed relatively low. And with this, transaction fees are now officially at their lowest level since July 28, 2021. Low fees typically maximize the chances of a bounce. https://t.co/zTg2CSd3xO pic.twitter.com/qTO2vao940

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 13, 2022

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