New Delhi: The cryptocurrency market continued to bleed ahead of the new year. Rising skepticism from global veterans have dampened sentiments in the digital token market. Barring the dollar pegged stablecoins, all other eight among the top 10 digital tokens were trading lower at 8.30 am IST. Cardano, Terra and Polkadot dropped 6-8 per cent each, whereas Bitcoin tested $46,000 level.

The global crypto market cap dropped almost 4 per cent to $2.18 trillion mark compared to the last day. The total crypto market volume dropped about 7 per cent to $95.40 billion.

Global updates
2021 has been a blockbuster year for the crypto space, led by buzzwords like Metaverse, NFTs, DeFi, scaling solutions, and more. But it wasn't just the crypto lexicon that saw growth.

Investors have retreated from the most speculative corners of global markets of late, worried central banks’ rolling back stimulus could spell trouble

A series of events has also put the top-notch digital token in a downward slide for a month now. Most recently, comments from US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in on it.

Streamlining NFTs
For those considering NFTs as a fad, 2021 was nothing short of an eye-opener. While there were quite a few NFT-relevant tokens to show up in 2021, courtesy additional utilities.

"NFT market is going upward since last week. We can expect more upside in coming weeks, especially in metaverse lands, and bluechip NFTs like Deadfellas and Creature World," said Hiteh Malviya, founder, Itsblockchain.

Tech View by Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange
Bitcoin (BTC) has had a rather volatile 2021, oscillating between $29,000 to nearly $70,000 over the course of the year. Since its rejection from the all-time-high of $69,000 level, BTC lost support before wicking to $42,000 and consolidating in a range. Now, with price action looking relatively weak, here’s a look at what to potentially follow.

BTC, currently trading at $46,600, has several support levels below. First, is the $45,600 level that has provided support on three occasions in the past in December alone, followed by the low of its crash wick at $42,000, which remains yet to be filled and holds the potential for a strong bounce.

However, even if these levels are breached, all is far from lost, as historically strong support levels from September at $40,700 and $39,500 will come into play.

To resume any sign of bullishness however, BTC must break and hold $52K over longer time frames, followed by recovery of its vector candles (high volume candles) all the way up to $57,500. It is also possible that BTC continues to play in the range it has held in December, with highs of $52,000 and lows of $45,000 in early weeks of January.

Key levels
Support: $45,600, $42,000, $40,700, $39,500
Resistance: $51,500, $52,100, $57,500