First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Falls to $26K; Is $24K Next?

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Bitcoin's (BTC) recent price slide may have legs, according to technical analysis by alternative asset management firm Valkyrie Investments. The leading cryptocurrency by market value has declined by 10% to $26,200 this month – including a slide of nearly 4% over just the past day-plus – thanks in part to renewed bets the Fed will remain hawkish, a recovery in the U.S. dollar index, and lingering U.S. debt ceiling uncertainty. Per Valkyrie, a further decline toward $24,000 may be seen as bitcoin's daily chart Ichimoku cloud – a momentum indicator – has flipped bearish. "This suggests an ongoing high-timeframe bullish trend with a decline in bullish momentum and the potential for near-term retrenchment," wrote Chief Investment Officer Steven McClurg and team in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Crypto consortium Fahrenheit has won a bid to acquire insolvent lender Celsius Network, whose assets were previously valued at around $2 billion, according to court filings made early Thursday morning. The group will acquire Celsius’ institutional loan portfolio, staked cryptocurrencies, mining unit and additional alternative investments, and must pay a deposit of $10 million within three days to cement the deal, court filings show. A consortium of buyers that includes venture capital firm Arrington Capital and miner US Bitcoin Corp, Farenheit was selected as successful bidder following a lengthy auction process. Under the terms of the deal, the newly-formed company will get between $450 and $500 million in liquid cryptocurrency, and US Bitcoin Corp will construct a range of crypto mining facilities including a new 100 megawatt plant.

Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will remain in detention while he faces charges of falsifying official documents in Montenegro, according to a court statement Thursday. Although the Basic Court in the country's capital Podgorica had initially accepted a bail proposal from Kwon's lawyers, Bloomberg reported that a higher court had later annulled the decision. The Basic Court of Podgorica confirmed to CoinDesk the high court's decision, and that it had received the agreed payment of 400,000 euros ($428,000) from Kwon on May 17. Following the High Court ruling, the Basic Court has decided to extend Kwon's detention.

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows smaller tokens like decentralized GPU-based rendering solution Render Network's RNDR, and ARPA, the native token of privacy-preserving computation network ARPA Chain, outperformed market leaders by a big margin in the week ended May 23.
• RNDR has perhaps benefitted from speculation that Apple's virtual reality headset will utilize its decentralized graphics processing network.
• APRA Chain's impending mainnet launch, reportedly due in June, seems to have galvanized investor interest in the native cryptocurrency.

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