The leading cryptocurrency declined early on Wednesday and traded at $17,572 at the moment of writing. BTC market cap now stands at $350.59 billion, or 38.94% of the overall crypto market cap.

According to CoinMarketCap, BTC hit the swing high of $20,582 over the past 24 hours. Overnight, the cryptocurrency dived to the yearly low of $17,166.

Bitcoin declined following the news that Binance Holdings, Ltd. plans to acquire the FTX.com exchange. Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, stated that FTX requested the company's help due to the significant liquidity crunch. "To protect users, we signed a non-binding letter of intent, intending to fully acquire FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch," Binance announced.

Altcoin market

Ethereum, Bitcoin's main competitor, also declined early on Wednesday. The altcoin traded at $1,298 at the moment of writing. ETH's market cap is $158.56 billion, or 17.61% of the total crypto market cap.

Out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, all of them decreased over the past 24 hours except the USD Coin stablecoin. The worst performing cryptocurrency was Dogecoin, which plunged by 22.89%.

Over the past week, the biggest losers were Dogecoin (-41.58%), XRP (-16.43%), and Litecoin (-10.78%). Polygon advanced by 13.05%.

According to CoinGecko, the worst performing cryptocurrency out of the top 100 coins by market cap yesterday were FTX (-73.11%) and Solana (-20%). Due to its recent losses, Solana is no longer in the top 10. The best performing cryptocurrency was PAX Gold, which gained 2.21%.

Over the past seven days, the best and worst performing cryptocurrencies were OKB (+24.31%) and FTX (-80.39%).

The total crypto market cap fell below the key level of $1 trillion early on Wednesday.

The market cap has decreased more than threefold since hitting an all-time high of $3 trillion in November.

Outlook by crypto analysts

Many analysts are bullish on Bitcoin, with Raoul Pal predicting that BTC could hit new all-time highs soon.

According to Paul, the cryptocurrency has undergone significant changes in October. BTC reached a high of $20,000 in early October after diving to $19,000 in summer and early autumn. It fell to $18,000 at the end of the month.

However, Bitcoin showed great performance last week and tested $21,000, its highest level in a month and a half. Raoul Pal believes that BTC could experience steady, exponential growth in the upcoming 12-18 months. However, it would require macroeconomic perturbations, which negatively affected global markets since the beginning of 2022, to cease.

Ton Weiss also expects BTC to skyrocket and predicts that Bitcoin could reach $100,000 in 2023.

Michael van de Poppe sees the leading cryptocurrency break towards $30,000 within the next 2-3 weeks.

TechDev predicts that BTC will move up in the future citing the high correlation between BTC and NASDAQ, which peaked in April 2021.