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Chart of the Day

The broader crypto market has flipped red again in the past 24 hours. This came after Meta, formerly known as Facebook, revealed its mediocre Q4 earnings and announced a rather disappointing forecast for the near-to-mid-term, leading to its shares plunging by as much as 24% during after-hours trading. In a similar (but less severe) vein, BTC is down 5% in the last 24 hours, and is currently trading just above the $36k support zone (as of the time of writing) after it failed to test the $40k psychological barrier. This downside momentum may eventually see BTC test the $35.5k support level at some point and, if it does, we may end up witnessing the number 1 cryptocurrency by market cap consolidate its losses further. ETH isn't faring much better, and has suffered similar losses to BTC after it was discovered that the cross-chain protocol Wormhole has fallen victim to an exploit of more than 120k wrapped ETH. This hack of a popular bridge between major networks like Ethereum and Solana has cast a long shadow over ETH's and SOL's performances, with both tokens experiencing 5% and 10% plunges respectively within the past 24 hours. Although it isn't looking that rosy for the larger crypto market with regard to price action, there are some on-chain signs that continue to paint a positive picture of BTC's mid-to-long-term future. For one, BTC's illiquid supply has seen a conspicuous uptick over the past week, as over 0.27% of the supply has moved to an illiquid state within said timeframe. In considering the extant bearish macroeconomic environment, this increase in BTC's illiquid supply may actually signal a bullish supply divergence. After all, this was exactly what happened in the aftermath of the May sell-off in 2021. Additionally, BTC's daily RSI has once again dipped into the oversold regions, an important signal that may have a profound impact on both BTC's and ETH's market structures

Talk of the Town

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet (parent company of Google) has made his first public comment on the concept of Web3. In his speech at Google's Q4 earnings call, Pichai announced that the company is currently looking into blockchain technology and the many applications it can potentially power, and are also exploring ways to value-add to this nascent technology. Many of Google's Silicon Valley peers like Block (formerly known as Square) have also recently embraced the concept of Web3 by establishing digital payments systems and providing services that support cryptocurrencies, and it looks like Google may be going down the same path very soon.