(Kitco News) - The struggle to generate momentum continued for Bitcoin (BTC) and the wider cryptocurrency market on Monday as prices traded flat on the day with no major developments to give crypto traders anything to be excited about.
Data from TradingView shows that bulls managed to claw their way back above support at $20,000 during the afternoon trading session after Bitcoin dipped to a daily low of $19,585 in the closing hours on Sunday.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
While Monday’s recovery back above $20,000 was a welcomed sight for many, Kitco senior market analyst Jim Wyckoff cautioned bulls about being overly optimistic as bears are still in control of the market.
“Prices over the weekend hit a six-week low and are trending down again. Bears have the overall near-term technical advantage, which suggests more sideways-lower price action in the near term,” Wyckoff warned in his morning Bitcoin brief.
Weakness in the near term, but Bitcoin will survive
The potential for weakness in the near term was also noted by independent market analyst Michaël van de Poppe, who posted the following Tweet outlining one potential price path that Bitcoin could follow over the next couple of weeks.
Still a potential scenario on #Bitcoin.
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) August 29, 2022
The trigger is a reclaim at $19K for me, but we'll have to see whether this stands.
Total market capitalization reaches 200-Week MA and usually grants for support, and then an HL is confirmed.$DXY topping soon? pic.twitter.com/lg7tij13qa
As noted by Poppe at the end of his Tweet, how Bitcoin performs in the days and weeks ahead is likely to be largely influenced by the performance of the U.S. dollar, which has been on a tear higher since early August.
That being said, Bitcoin does indeed appear as though it will survive to fight another day, which has led some previous naysayers to issue self-corrections on the Bitcoin matter.
That includes author and former stockbroker Jordan Belfort, also known as “The Wolf of Wall Street,” who recently acknowledged that his initial projections in 2017 that BTC would head to zero were wrong.
“At the time that I really hated crypto, I stand by everything I said about crypto in 2017 except for one thing, I was wrong about Bitcoin going to zero but I didn’t look closely enough because I just said it’s a scam because it just seemed like that because in all the ear markings of that,” Belfort said.
Mixed day for the altcoin market
It was largely a mixed bag of trading in the altcoin market, with the majority of tokens flat on the day as they followed the lead of Bitcoin.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
The top performers for the day include XYO (XYO), which put on a gain of 14.87%, along with a 13.5% increase in the price of Synthetix (SNX) and a 10.54% gain for the Ethereum liquid staking service Lido DAO (LDO).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $980 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.4%.
