Coin Price Today, January 8: Despite a positive end to the week, Bitcoin is back below $44,000, altcoins on fire as Wall Street trades sideways

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Bitcoin closed higher last week, but momentum appears to continue to stall above $44,000.

BTC Price Chart – 1 Week | Source: TradingView

US stocks

U.S. stock futures were little changed late Sunday after major indexes started 2024 with a negative start to the week, as traders awaited inflation and earnings data from major banks this week.

Dow Jones futures fell 35 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures contracts rose 0.14% and 0.21%, respectively.

On Sunday, congressional leaders announced a deal to headline $1.59 trillion in spending aimed at averting a potential government shutdown.

Boeing shares are likely to be lower on Monday as dozens of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes are temporarily grounded for inspection. On January 5, a window and a piece of the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 exploded in mid-air shortly after taking off from Portland (Oregon). The explosion forced the plane to make an emergency landing.

Wall Street just suffered its first weekly loss in ten weeks as big tech stocks like Apple underperformed and U.S. Treasury yields rose. The Dow Jones fell 1.5% for the week and the S&P 500 fell 0.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite posted its worst weekly performance since September 2023, falling 3.25%.

Apple shares fell about 6% last week. The 10-year Treasury bond yield returned to above 4%.

Markets rose after a year-end recovery, driven by the Federal Reserve’s dovish policies, sparking concerns among investors that stocks are now overbought. Adding to those concerns were December’s top jobs report and minutes from this week’s Federal Reserve meeting showing growing uncertainty about the path of rate cuts.

“I do think the market may be getting too hot,” said Chris Verrone, director of technical and macro research at Strategas. This may need to be resolved through some form of accumulation or correction in the first quarter. But overall, the trend is good and momentum lags behind the market. “

This week, traders will get a better understanding of the central bank’s roadmap for rate cuts. Consumer price index for December will be released on Thursday and producer price index on Friday, which will show whether the Fed’s efforts to reduce inflation to 2% are being achieved.

The latest corporate earnings season kicks off on Friday with reports from major banks including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. UnitedHealth will also report results this week from BlackRock and Delta Air Lines.

Bitcoin and altcoins

Bitcoin fell in the last three days of the week but still ended last week in the green.

However, after multiple attempts and failures to overcome this hurdle, Bitcoin seems to be showing signs of weakness near the $44,500 area.

The top asset has now fallen back below the $44,000 mark and is trading near $43,700, losing more than 1% in value over the past 24 hours.

BTC Price Chart – 1 Day | Source: TradingView

The altcoin market is in the red, with most projects in the top 100 posting losses.

Astar (ASTR), Mina (MINA), THORChain (RUNE), and Axie Infinity (AXS) were the worst-performing projects on the day, plunging more than 10%.

Other projects such as NEAR Protocol (NEAR), Flow (FLOW), Internet Computer (ICP), Gala (GALA), Injective (INJ), Algorand (ALGO), eCash (XEC), FTX Token (FTT), Aptos (APT) ), Terra Classic (LUNC), MultiversX (EGLD), The Graph (GRT), Decentraland (MANA), Theta Network (THETA), Lido DAO (LDO), The Sandbox (SAND), Neo (NEO), Synthetix (SNX ), Kava (KAVA), Solana (SOL), Filecoin (FIL), Frax Share (FXS), Render (RNDR), Shiba Inu (SHIB)… all lost 7-9% of their value.

Source: Coin360

Ethereum (ETH) closed the last two days of the week in the red, having also closed last week with a bearish candle. ETH’s rebound over the past few days stalled near $2,300 on January 4. The second-largest asset by market capitalization has since failed to break that threshold.

ETH is currently trading close to the $2,200 mark, down more than 2% in value compared to the previous 24 hours.