Traders Chase Altcoins As Bitcoin Trades Sideways

After Bitcoin closed Monday at $10,689, it became apparent that the trend is currently sideways, prompting traders to look for altcoins and decentralized finance tokens to gain profit in the short term.

Bitcoin opened at $10,777 Monday and went as high as $10,947, which at that point could have recouped the losses from the crash on Sept. 21. However, the increase was short-lived, with the benchmark cryptocurrency closing at $10,689.

The clear hurdle is still $11,000, Cointelegraph reported. A chart shared by the publication hints that traders are reluctant to participate and are waiting for $12,000 before opening new positions.

On the weekly time frame, $10,000 and $10,500 have been maintained as key supports. Bitcoin has never closed below $10,000 in the last 64 days. With a new month beginning, there is a possibility for the price to move higher. "Ultimately, not much has changed and Bitcoin price simply continues to slowly grind higher," Cointelegraph added.

The sideways behavior of Bitcoin has caused traders to look for opportunities in altcoins and DeFi tokens. At the time of this writing, some coins like Polkadot (DOT) and Binance Coin (BNB) posted 5.6% and 6.8% increases respectively.

In the weekly time frame, some tokens printed double-digit increases versus Bitcoin's 4.8%. DOT posted 10.4% while BNB had a 17.5% increase. Chainlink (LINK) is still down half of its previous all-time high of $20 and currently trading at $10.29. Still, it is up 18.1% from the last seven days.

With DeFi coins also losing steam, traders are also looking for the next DeFi "thing." The belief stemmed from the fact that multiple DeFi tokens in the past have increased drastically within days. YFI, the governance token of Yearn Finance, increased from $30 to $43,966 while UNI went from zero to $8.40.

Because of this, traders flocked to an unreleased project from Yearn Finance creator Andre Cronje. According to Cointelegraph, this new project, called Eminence, was not yet finished and was intended to be released in about three weeks. But started putting money into the protocol soon after it was announced and it did not take long for a hacker to exploit and drain the project of funds.

In a bizarre turn of events, the hacker opted to transfer $8 million of funds back to Cronje, who then promised to release the funds back.