Wild Card

Chart of the Day

The prices paid to U.S. producers posted a record 10% annual rise in November, revealing that inflationary pressures will likely continue into 2022. On the back of this, investors are bracing themselves for a dramatic policy switch by the U.S. Federal Reserve as the Fed seeks to pave the way for the first interest rate hike in 2022. The fear of an overaggressive policy switch may force investors into a risk-off mode that would, in turn, throw the crypto market into a month-long turmoil.

Thankfully, this scenario doesn't seem to be playing out yet, as BTC has just formed a base above the $46k support level, recovering some losses from the Monday dip in the process. However, there is no need to get too excited about this yet, as BTC is still currently trading below both the $48.5k resistance zone, as well as its 100-hourly moving average. For BTC to see more upside momentum, it will need to clear the $49.5k resistance zone and establish a stronger foothold above its 100-hourly moving average. Further, BTC option flows are also painting a more bearish picture than a bullish one, as premium activity is currently centered on call-selling at the $50-$70k strike prices, indicating that investors are still leaning toward a more risk-off strategy when it concerns BTC. 

Talk of the Town

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap (CMC) suffered a technical glitch. As a result of that, the prices and market caps of the coins listed on CMC's platform were blown up to jaw-breaking figures. BTC's market cap, for instance, flew up to $14.7 quintillion at some point, with its price also hitting $789 billion per coin at the same time. Several DeFi protocols that relied heavily on CMC for their price data had to urgently halt the operations of their smart contracts to prevent incorrect liquidations. CMC has since responded to the bug with a tongue-in-cheek tweet, "How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple hours?" Whilst CMC's response is funny, let's hope that no one did anything drastic like quitting their jobs because of this glitch — they certainly wouldn't be laughing at this tweet now if they did.