Bitcoin (BTC-USD) hovers below $62,000 Wednesday morning as the cryptocurrency has run up by nearly 40% in 2024 year-to-date. Yahoo Finance Senior Markets Reporter Jared Blikre explains how circumstances that may allow the crypto asset to run higher as 140,000 bitcoin will be released by the defunct Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in July.

Blikre also takes a look at the price action of other cryptocurrencies like solana (SOL-USD), cardano (ADA-USD), and ethereum (ETH-USD).

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

Bitcoin this morning.

We've had some volatile action recently, but not this morning.

You can see it's up about half a percent over the trailing 24 hours.

I want to look at a year to date chart so we can see the consolidation that's been happening across at these highs.

So we have basically from the high 50 thousands all the way up to the high about 73,000.

And we are at the lower end of this range right now.

So, uh, if every continues the way it's been going for the last few months, you would expect it to retrace to the top.

Now, if it breaks down, you're going to see some people saying, Well, this is an M top, but it's too early to call that right now.

You need to get a decisive break below about 58.

57,000.

That happens.

That sets up 45,000 as the next target.

And what could be the catalyst here?

Well, over in Japan, Mount Gox that that firm, that crypto firm that went south about 10 years ago uh, they had a bunch of Bitcoin stolen about 700,100 40,000 are going to going to be distributed by the trustee.

That could come to the market.

That could result in a lot of selling.

Um, and that could happen in the month of June.

It could happen in the month of July.

Uh, but sometime this year, we are expecting that.

So that is a catalyst, a potential catalyst and a risk that we keep in mind.

But, uh, let me just show you the longer term technicals.

Here is a five year chart of Bitcoin.

I'm gonna compare Bitcoin to some of the other crypto currencies that we have.

What you see here is we are just consolidating that the consolidation area is really small that we are just looking at on this longer term chart.

But it is higher than these highs we had in 2021.

Compare that to Ethereum.

Here we have a low, a higher Excuse me a lower high here.

And this is another consolidation area, but just at a lower level.

And then you take another token, like Solana, very similar to ether, but just a little bit lower itself.

And this continues down the line.

And when you get to Cardano.

You can see it's still in the bottom end of its range here.

So not all crypto has come back, and we have a lot of laggards.

It kind of reminds me of stocks, how you have stocks like peloton that just haven't been able to bounce back the way Microsoft and Netflix have.

So there is that dynamic going on.

But also, I want to point out that another potential bearish impulse or headwind against these, uh, cryptocurrencies is the US Dollar Index and that is heading higher right now.

This is a year to date chart.

This is the highest level for the dollar in about a year.

Uh, excuse me in about four weeks, and if it were to breach these highs here, that would probably put some downward pressure on cryptocurrencies commodities.

International stocks.

We're not there just yet, but we want to keep an eye on it.

Guys, indeed do.

And we know you will.

Jared Blicker.

Thanks so much.

Appreciate it.