Leading cryptocurrencies inched higher on Sunday as oil prices tumbled after Israel’s attack on Iran avoided hitting the country’s oil infrastructure. 

What Happened: Bitcoin spiked above $68,000 late evening before making a U-turn toward $67,800. 

Oil prices were hit with the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) falling 4.6% to $68.48 a barrel as Israel struck Iran’s military targets but left its oil facilities unharmed.

Ethereum too reversed the downsides from last week to hit $2,520 before falling to $2,490 due to profit-taking.

Total cryptocurrency liquidations hit nearly $70 million in the last 24 hours, with $45 million in downside bets getting erased.

Bitcoin’s Open Interest surged 3.08% in the last 24 hours, indicating an influx of new money into the derivatives market.

Market sentiment remained in the “Greed” zone, according to the Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index, reflecting upside potential.

Top Gainers (24-Hours)

The global cryptocurrency stood at $2.3 trillion, following an increase of 0.61% in the last 24 hours.

Stock futures edged higher Sunday overnight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures rose 197 points, or 0.46%, as of 8:45 p.m. EDT.  Futures tied to the S&P 500 gained 0.54%, while Nasdaq 100 Futures lifted 0.66%.

Last week, major averages such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 fell significantly, closing down 2.45% and 0.88%, respectively.

Investors were looking forward to the third-quarter earnings report of tech behemoths like Apple Inc. AAPL and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, slated for later this week.

Additionally, they would look to dissect key macroeconomic data, including the September jobs report due on Friday and the personal expenditures report scheduled for Thursday.

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Analyst Notes: Popular cryptocurrency analyst and trader Michaël van de Poppe described Bitcoin’s ongoing consolidation phase as the longest since 2016 and 2020. 

“I think we’ll break out in the next 2 weeks & see Bitcoin at $90,000-100,000 around NYE,” he predicted.

He further deemed the current cycle as more “complex and different” than previous cycles and predicted it to run longer than usual four-year cycles, depending on liquidity and interest rates.

As it turned out, Bitcoin failed to reach a “bullish” weekly close of over $67,900 as flagged by widely followed cryptocurrency analyst Rekt Capital.

It will be interesting to observe King Crypto’s trajectory as markets open for a fresh trading week.