Cryptocurrency markets continue to perform well this week as Bitcoin managed to hold its support of $22k after a bullish rally yesterday. While stocks opened with momentum on Monday, many closed lower towards the end of the day, with optimism around a potential market recovery quickly evaporating. One significant contributor to the stock market’s underperformance on Monday is the news that Apple plans to slow spending and hiring amid rising interest rates and recession fears.

Key Points:

• Bitcoin price holds above $22k as the global cryptocurrency market cap remains above $1 trillion.
• Bitcoin miners move coins out of wallets.
• Celsius receives approval to build a Bitcoin mining farm to repay investors.
• Stocks retreat after opening with momentum.
• Apple news suggests the company will cut costs and scale back next year.

Bitcoin Price Holds Above $22K, and Global Cryptocurrency Market Cap Remains Above $1 Trillion

The past week has been bullish for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets overall. BTC’s price peaked from a low of $19k on July 13th to a high of $22.7k yesterday, July 18th. Since then, the price has retraced back to the $21.8k level, and once again, attempting to rally past the $22k support line.

Bitcoin’s trading volume has been up 32% in the past 24 hours, suggesting the market still has plenty of momentum to push to new heights, despite increasing volatility. Moreover, the global cryptocurrency market cap remains above $1 trillion as Ethereum rallies past $1,500 amid newfound investor hype regarding the upcoming network merge and transition from ETH’s proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, making the network much more sustainable.

Bitcoin News: BTC Miner Capitulation

This week’s relevant news regarding Bitcoin is an on-chain analysis report from CryptoQuant showing over 14k Bitcoins (over $300 million at the time of writing) were transferred out of miner wallets. This suggests that miners are preparing to offload their BTC soon, as the recent price hike is likely an incentive to take mining profit before a potential market correction.

Despite miners moving a significant amount of Bitcoins out of their wallets, BTC’s price continues to rally and show considerable upside.

Speaking of crypto mining, a report by Reuters suggests that the now-defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, which collapsed and is now filing for bankruptcy, has plans to return money to investors by mining more cryptocurrency. The company received approval from a Bankruptcy Judge to spend over $3 million to construct a new Bitcoin mining facility in their latest efforts to pay back investors. Whether their Bitcoin mining plan will pan out is yet to be seen.

Stocks Lose Momentum Amid Apple News

While the stock market opened positively on Monday, by the end of the day, most of the new week’s excitement had fallen off. Dow Jones lost over 500 points, opening at 31,626 and closing at 31,702, S&P 500 lost over 50 points and NASDAQ 3 points on Monday.

The stock market pullback is likely due to Bloomberg’s report that Apple will slow hiring and spending next year to cope with the economic uncertainty and looming recession. As one of the most influential tech giants in the U.S., Apple’s news about the corporation cutting back on spending is worrisome to investors, especially during earnings season.

A report by CNBC suggests that smartphone shipments fell by as much as 9% in Q2. The good news is that Apple’s iPhone remains in high demand even with inflation fears running rampant. On the upside, Apple managed to increase its share of the global phone shipment market in Q2 by 3%, from 14% to 17%, providing reassurance to traders and investors.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any stocks.

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