Market Wrap: Bitcoin Bounces Around $40K as Stocks Waver; Crypto Security Concerns Intensify

Bitcoin (BTC) continued to trade around $40,000 on Monday after flat performance over the past week.

It appears that buyers are starting to return, which typically occurs during the second half of the month – a pattern observed by some analysts this year. Further, historical data suggests stocks and cryptos are entering a seasonally strong period in April and May, which could encourage short-term price rises.

Still, geopolitical and regulatory risks remain. For example, fighting between Russia and Ukraine intensified over the past weekend, which kept some investors on edge. And in crypto markets, new evidence of money laundering and hacks could trouble policymakers around the world.

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For now, some alternative cryptocurrencies outperformed bitcoin on Monday, indicating a greater appetite for risk among traders. Terra’s LUNA token and Monero’s XMR token were up by 8% over the past 24 hours, compared with a 2% rise in BTC over the same period.

Meanwhile, stocks wavered on Monday, while traditional safe haven assets such as gold and the U.S. dollar rose. That suggests global investors remain cautious despite short-term price jumps in speculative assets.

Bitcoin’s price bounce over the past 24 hours coincided with a small uptick in trading volume, according to CoinDesk data.

Still, buy volume and sell volume were balanced on Monday, suggesting indecision among buyers and sellers. Traders will need to keep BTC above $40,000 with higher than average volume in order to sustain the recovery phase.

So far, technical indicators are neutral. Katie Stockton, managing director of Fairlead Strategies, noticed a false breakout in BTC on the charts, which suggests resistance at $48,000 could stall a price bounce.

“Long-term momentum has weakened notably, so a confirmed breakdown would increase risk, noting secondary support is near $27,200 BTC in our work,” Stockton wrote in a Monday report.

On April 14, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attributed the $620 million cryptocurrency hack from Axie Infinity-linked Ronin bridge to North Korea’s hacking group Lazarus Group and APT 38.

The FBI said in a press release last Thursday: “The FBI, in coordination with Treasury and other U.S. government partners, will continue to expose and combat the DPRK’s use of illicit activities – including cybercrime and cryptocurrency theft – to generate revenue for the regime.”

“The magnitude of this one (hack) shows things have moved from small exploits to true national security concerns,” Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at blockchain research firm TRM told Business Insider. “It’s staggering – bank robbery at the speed of the internet,” Redbord said.

According to CoinDesk’s Nikhilesh De and Danny Nelson, the Treasury Department added an Ethereum address to its sanctions list on Thursday. Wallet profiler Nansen had labeled the sanctioned address as a “Ronin Bridge Exploiter” when checked by CoinDesk on April 14. It held 148,000 ETH at publication time. CoinDesk independently confirmed that the wallet is tied to the Ronin exploit.

Here is a rundown.

Most digital assets in the CoinDesk 20 ended the day lower.

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive, and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk 20 is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges.