BTC and Major Altcoins Recover; Tether Releases Report on its Reserves

Chart of the Day

In some good news today, it appears that the broader crypto market has finally broken through the sea of red that it has been submerged under for the past few days. On Tuesday evening (Asian trading hours), BTC managed to form a base near the $36.5k level before embarking on a recovery wave to break above the $37.5k resistance level. However, the momentum soon lost steam after the largest crypto by market cap failed to rise above the $38.5k resistance zone. As of the time of writing, BTC is trading above the $37.5k zone after experiencing a 3% gain within the past 24 hours. In a similar vein, ETH is currently trading above the $2,600 level, up by nearly 5% within a similar timeframe, whilst most major altcoins have also flipped green from Monday's downside correction. This altcoin recovery charge is led by consistent top performers like LUNA and AVAX, both of which experienced impressive double-digit percentage gains within the past 24 hours. In further news on BTC, it can be observed that since the beginning of 2021, BTC has behaved in a very dichotomous manner with regard to price performance when the two different halves (first and second halves) of every month are taken into consideration. The launch of the futures-based BTC ETFs in October of 2021 may have further enhanced this cyclicality observed in BTCs performances, as can be seen from the chart above. Additionally, the contango effect from BITO selling front-month contracts and buying next-month contracts may also have had a detectable impact on the spot market. Therefore, the spillover effects caused by inflows following rolls would likely amplify the cyclical nature of BTC's price performance for the next few months to come.

Talk of the Town

On Tuesday, and in response to its many vocal critics, Tether released its latest attestation report that details the coin issuer's reserves composition for all to see. The latest report reveals that there has been a 21% decrease in Tether's commercial paper holdings over the last quarter, and also confirms that the resilience of USDT has been strengthened in recent times by the firm's increased investments in money market funds and treasury bills. Finally, Tether has also cited MHA's (an accounting firm) evaluation that Tether's reserve for its USDT stablecoins "exceeds the amount required to redeem the digital asset tokens issue" as the main reason behind the change in the company's reserve holding figures.