(Kitco News) - Crypto traded sideways again, and traders were sidelined, while the markets wait for key economic data to drop Thursday morning.
Traditional financial markets experienced a similar story in trading on Wednesday as hotter-than-expected producer price inflation data and minutes from the Federal Reserve’s September meeting only served to deepen concerns that the Fed will continue its aggressive tightening policy.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) bulls spent the day battling bears for control near the $19,100 support level, with neither side making much progress as BTC traded near $19,150 at the time of writing.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The lackluster state of the market was addressed by Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff, who noted that “Bulls and bears remain frustrated by the lack of daily price volatility in the market – despite heightened risk aversion in the general marketplace.”
“Bulls are disappointed that Bitcoin has not been more attractive as a safe-haven asset the past several weeks,” Wyckoff postulated, adding “bears can’t seem to press their case to the downside as prices grind sideways.”
“Bulls and bears are still on a level overall near-term technical playing field,” Wyckoff concluded. “That suggests more sideways and choppy trading in the near term.”
A warning from 2018
While no one knows for sure which way BTC will head in the coming days and months, the prospect of another 75 basis point hike by the Fed in November has many anticipating further declines in the crypto market.
One possible scenario of what a pullback could look like was provided by il Capo of Crypto, who noticed a striking similarity between Bitcoin's currency price action and the price action it saw back in 2018, just before the bottom fell out of the market.
$BTC in 2018 vs. $BTC now pic.twitter.com/74cHiRGPkm
— il Capo Of Crypto (@CryptoCapo_) October 12, 2022
Should such a scenario play out, BTC could dip as low as $14,000 before it manages to regain its footing and head higher.
Not much changed on Wednesday
Overall, activity across global financial markets was rather calm, which often signals that traders are unsure about what to do.
At the close of the markets in the U.S., the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq were all slightly in the red, down 0.33%, 0.10% and 0.09%, respectively.
The altcoin market saw a mix of red and green with the vast majority of tokens experiencing less than a 2% change in price from the previous day.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
The biggest gainers on the day include Huobi Token (HT), whose price climbed 24% to $6.58, a 9.88% increase for Numeraire (NMR), and a 7.42% increase for Hedera (HBAR).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $923 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.8%.
