Bitcoin (BTC) continued to work on cracking the $17,000 mark on Jan. 4 as an “extremely tight” trading zone held firm.
BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView
$17,000 “possible” thanks to CPI print
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $16,906 on Bitstamp, up $300 from the previous day’s low.
The largest cryptocurrency had benefited from a positive start to the year on Wall Street, this giving a broader boost to previously sideways crypto assets.
“Bitcoin trading with legacy markets yesterday,” Filbfilb, co-founder of trading suite DecenTrader, began a summary of recent events by stating.
Analyzing the 12-hour chart, he argued that the 50-day moving average (MA) needed to hold for bulls, with the immediate range support and resistance levels at $15,500 and $18,000, respectively.
Next week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) release for the United States, if favorable, could give BTC price action the catalyst it needs.
“Bitcoin needs to maintain the 50 DMA and break last week’s high but a trip there seems possible heading into the CPI data,” Filbfilb added:
“At the moment we are in the upper range of last week’s price action.”BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Filbfilb/ Twitter
As Cointelegraph reported, others had hoped that there would be sufficient impetus for Bitcoin to follow in the footsteps of both stocks and gold as 2023 got underway.
The latter, trading firm QCP Capital explained on the day, was due to a “Start of year allocation into alternative assets.”
XAU/USD was up 15% in the last two months, it wrote in a market update sent to Telegram channel subscribers, with January historically its best month of the year.
“Despite the mini rally, BTC is still trading in an extremely tight falling wedge – with 18k the key breakout level to the topside,” it continued, echoing Filbfilb:
“In the medium-term, 28k is looking more and more key – as the Head and shoulders neckline, and 61.8% fibonacci retracement level of the $3,858 2020 low to $69,000 2021 high.”BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: QCP Capital
Analysis puts faith in $1,000 holding for Ethereum
The more confident performance looked set to greet Ether (ETH), meanwhile, with solid support levels giving bulls much-needed comfort in the event of a fresh market downturn.
Related: 3 reasons why it could be a rocky week for Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins
“ETH continues looking decidedly more bullish than BTC, although it too is still trading within a consolidation pattern,” QCP wrote:
“The top of the triangle comes in at 1,400 but the big resistance zone lies between 1,700 to 2,000 to the topside. On the downside we expect 1,000-1,100 to be very decent support.”ETH/USD annotated chart. Source: QCP Capital
ETH/USD traded at $1,250 for the first time since Dec. 16 at the time of writing, its Jan. 4 daily candle so far sealing 3% gains.
Analyzing when the crypto market bottom might come, QCP was nonetheless prepared to lie in wait for many months to come.
ETH/USD 1-day candle chart (Binance). Source: TradingView
“We expect this could only come in Oct-Nov again this year, but remain open minded to markets bottoming sooner than that,” it concluded.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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