Bitcoin (BTC) matched six-month highs on Feb. 21 as the latest attempt to flip $25,000 to support ended in failure.
BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView
Bitcoin unsettled before Wall Street open
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $25,250 on Bitstamp.
A firm rejection on hourly timeframes then saw the pair return below $24,750, maintaining a trading range in place throughout the weekend.
With Wall Street on holiday on Feb. 20, Bitcoin faced three days of “out-of-hours” trading featuring thinner liquidity and more risk of volatile moves both up and down.
These to some extent came to pass, with efforts to beat the prior week’s highs being short lived and resulting in liquidations of both long and short traders, data from Coinglass confirms.
BTC liquidations chart. Source: Coinglass
Monitoring resource Material Indicators continued to track the source of flash volatility, this coming in the form of whale traders on exchanges attempting to move the market with mass bid and ask liquidity.
Update on the range set by the Notorious B.I.D.#FireCharts shows ask liquidity laddered up to ~$26.5k and it appears liquidity in that range is getting trickled into the active #trading range and replenishing resistance at $25k. Want to see more bids above $24k to retest $25k. pic.twitter.com/RW0MMxCuIl
– Material Indicators (@MI_Algos) February 20, 2023
“2500 BTC in sell orders stacked between $24.8-25.3K on the BTC/USDT pair,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades continued.
“Could be for three reasons: 1. Actual sell orders. 2. Orders to suppress price to fill orders before pulling them or buying into them later. 3. Orders to walk price down.”
BTC/USDT order book data (Binance). Source: Daan Crypto Trades/ Twitter
Fellow trader Crypto Tony was likewise cautious on the potential for resistance to be overcome.
“We are grinding $25,000 once again here, but the question remains do we stay above that resistance zone, or deviate and come back down,” part of Twitter commentary on the day stated.
Analyst: BTC price action echoing July 2021
In an update on an existing theory, meanwhile, Venturefounder, a contributor to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, predicted a retest of lower levels before upward continuation for Bitcoin.
Related: Bitcoin faces do-or-die weekly, monthly close with macro bull trend at stake
He based this on market conditions from mid-2021, the year in which BTC/USD produced a “double top” all-time high in April and November, respectively.
“$25k BTC is very alike $31k in July 2021,” he argued.
“Bitcoin might go above it in a ‘Fakeout’ but likely retest lower support before consolidation and resume to the uptrend.”
BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Venturefounder/ Twitter
Venturefounder cautioned that macroeconomic events could end up weaking Bitcoin and crypto more broadly – part of a complex series of predictions from crypto sources for the upcoming year.
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