Bitcoin Trades Below $17K Following Disappointing Weekly Close (Market Watch)

Bitcoin was unable to reclaim $17K, but the Open Network’s TON continues ripping, up another 6% in the past 24 hours.

The cryptocurrency market remained largely flat throughout the past 24 hours. Bitcoin’s price is still unable to reclaim $17K, while the majority of altcoins also didn’t chart any notable gains.

Bitcoin’s Price Flat Below $17K
Bitcoin’s consolidation below $17K continues. At the time of this writing, the cryptochttps://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/w_766+q_lossless+ret_img+to_webp/https://cryptopotato.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/btc_price_chart_191201.jpgurrency trades at around $16,750 and has failed to produce anything of significance in the past 24 hours. The weekly candle closed below $17K, which was disappointing and shows the lack of buyers.

Source: Binance via TradingView
It’s worth noting that prolonged periods of low volatility are typically a precursor to big moves, so it’s important to stay vigilant as the crypto markets rarely stay calm for long.

At the same time, it’s also evident that market participants are reluctant to accumulate aggressively, perhaps in anticipation of lower prices because of the FTX contagion. Just today, Dutch exchange Bitvavo said DCG has experienced liquidity issues.

Altcoin Volatility Disappears
Bitcoin’s dominance remained flat. It’s the metric analysts use to gauge its share relative to that of the rest of the market. This means that altcoins were unable to take advantage of the indecisiveness in Bitcoin’s price.

Binance cements its position in terms of dollar liquidity within a ~+/-25% price range. It is followed by Coinbase, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, and Gemini. The aggregated liquidity is ~$590M within the defined range.

Although sizable, a ~35k BTC (merely 0.18% of the circulating supply) market sell would send the price down to $12,500.

We recognize this scenario is improbable and would likely never materialize, owing to the existence of OTC markets which help absorb buy/sell pressure that secondary markets cannot. But mulling over such possibilities helps us contemplate the worst-case scenario.

@Banaa_898

#Bitcoin is interesting and nice to have for the people in Western Europe, United States, and developed world with a strong currency.'
#Bitcoin represents a life raft to the other 7 billion people' 🔥😉

#BTC

Nothing Changed for BTC, its a bearish retest of FVG. it may bounce again to test 17500 but overall bearish

The Daily Chart
The price has been trapped inside a descending wedge pattern for several months and is consolidating with significantly lower volatility. Meanwhile, the 100-day moving average has served as a powerful barrier at around $17K.

The current action demonstrates a concerning lack of activity in Bitcoin’s market, which can be explained by recent events, which resulted in a lack of demand.

Considering the current market sentiment, it appears that one of the more probable outlooks for Bitcoin is to continue consolidating between the two substantial levels of $15K and $19K until a breakout occurs.

The 4-Hour Chart
In the 4-hour timeframe, the price has finally dropped below the ascending flag pattern. As is evident in the chart, the 0.5 level of Fibonacci retracement has acted as a great resistance and pushed the price towards the $15K support.

BTC seems likely to retest the flag’s lower boundary and complete the pullback pattern before the next downward rally.

Furthermore, the RSI indicator is currently standing at almost 50, indicating equilibrium has currently been reached.

Onchain Analysis
All on-chain valuation indicators conclude that Bitcoin is significantly undervalued. However, it is essential for whales to start accumulating again in order for the cryptocurrency to bottom out successfully.

Whales have continued to reduce spending, which is now at the lowest level since before Terra and Luna’s failure. The short-term local resistance for Bitcoin is the 1m-3m holder realized price, which is currently at $18.4k. In fact, this level has acted as a barrier during the market’s recent low-momentum rally.

Finally, based on the following graph, compared to the COVID and China-ban crashes, the funding rates metric seems to have rebounded much faster. It illustrates that the market sentiment is healing.
🧡 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🧡

This year, Bitcoin contracted more than 15%, month-to-month, for a record five times.

@Banaa_898