Bitcoin moved sideways while the altcoin market rallied significantly on Monday as traders pivoted away from the leading cryptocurrency ahead of Christmas.

What Happened: Bitcoin remained choppy, oscillating between the $92,000-$96,000 zone. The sideways movement comes a day after the apex cryptocurrency closed at a weekly loss for the first time since Donald Trump's election victory last month.

Investors shifted their capital to Ethereum and the rest of the altcoin market. The world's largest cryptocurrency rose 4.35% to nearly $3,400.

Bitcoin's dominance fell by 1.53%, while Ethereum and altcoin saw increases in their respective market shares.

Over $278 million was liquidated from the market in the last 24 hours, with nearly equal proportions of long and short liquidations.

Bitcoin's Open Interest rose 2.49% in the last 24 hours. An increase in Open Interest, coming alongside a sideways price action, indicated a potential upside move.

More than 66% of traders on Binance were leveraged long on Bitcoin, according to the Long/Short Ratio.

The market remained in the "Greed" zone, according to the Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index.

Top Gainers (24-Hours)

The global cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $3.32 trillion, following an increase of 2.04% in the last 24 hours.

Stocks began the holiday week high on spirits. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 66.69 points, or 0.16%, to close at 42,906.95. The S&P 500 added 0.73%, ending at 5,974.07, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite spiked 0.98% to 19,764.88.

Data released Monday indicated a sharp fall in U.S. consumer morale, with the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index falling to 104.7 in December, returning to mid-range levels seen during the previous two years.

The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq will close early on Christmas Eve, and the markets will be shut on Christmas Day.

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Analyst Notes: In a note to Benzinga, Arthur Azizov, CEO of cryptocurrency payment provider B2BINPAY attributed the market's ongoing correction to Bitcoin's growing dominance.

"Naturally, we can now anticipate a decline in Bitcoin's dominance, which should create room for altcoins to pick up momentum again," Azizov predicted. "Overall, this is all playing out as expected, with most assets returning to the 50% retracement zone of their recent impulse moves."

Widely followed cryptocurrency analyst and trader Ali Martinez drew attention to Ethereum's "most significant" support level of $3,030 – $3,130 and the "most significant" resistance level of $3,640 – $3,740.

"A sustained close outside of this no-trade zone will determine the direction of ETH's trend," Martinez remarked.

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