Market Wrap: Bitcoin Fails to Break $15.9K; Over 50K ETH Staked on Eth 2.0 Contract

Bitcoin gained Wednesday while Ethereum 2.0 staking has been ramping up.

Bitcoin trading around $15,694 as of 21:00 UTC. Gaining 2.6% over the previous 24 hours.

Constantin Kogan, managing partner at investment firm Wave Financial, sees an upside signal in the Power of Balance indicator, which uses opening, closing, high and low daily pricing to determine market movements.

"We've been ranging between $14,600 to $16,000 since Nov. 5. Bitcoin seems to have found a local floor at the $15,000 price," Andrew Tu, an executive at quant trading firm Efficient Frontier, told CoinDesk.

"In the very short term, we may see some consolidation of the bitcoin price around $15,000, which would be healthy after the last powerful breakout, before grinding higher toward $20,000."

"As BTC consolidates and more bullish fundamental news comes out for both bitcoin, like [Stanley] Druckenmiller coming out as an investor in BTC, and the general market, like the vaccine, it may provide the risk-on impetus to break above resistance at $16,000," Tu added.

For Efficient Frontier's Tu, some fundamental aspects that would cause traditional markets to dump may simultaneously pump bitcoin.

The amount of ether that has been staked in Ethereum's 2.0 upgrade smart contract passed 50,000 ETH Tuesday.

Users must stake at least 32 ETH in the contract in order to participate in the network upgrade, which is expected to enhance its security and scalability while maintaining the transaction history and functionality of existing ether balance.

Ben Chan, vice president of engineering at oracle provider Chainlink, told CoinDesk he is bullish on ETH 2.0 prospects but that more scaffolding still needs to be built for ETH 2.0 developers.