(Kitco News) - Global financial markets were under pressure on Thursday as the reality that the Federal Reserve intends to continue raising interest rates set in, leading investors to reduce their exposure to risk since there’s no telling when the Fed will get inflation under control.
Stocks were hammered as a result of Fed hawkishness, with the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all setting steep declines to close the day down 2.49%, 2.25% and 3.23%, respectively.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) bulls lost control of support at $17,800 in the early hours on Thursday, and the price continued to drift lower from there to hit a daily low of $17,325 in the afternoon trading session before being bid back above $17,400.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff touched on the early morning pullback in BTC on Thursday, calling it a “routine downside correction after hitting a five-week high Wednesday.”
The move lower was relatively mild by Bitcoin’s standards, which changed little in the macro picture moving forward.
“Recent price action has produced a bullish upside “breakout” from a choppy and sideways trading range on the daily bar chart and prices are now trending higher,” Wyckoff said, adding, “Bulls have the near-term technical advantage.”
Competing views
A survey of Crypto Twitter shows that many analysts have competing views about what comes next for the top crypto following one of the most volatile years in its existence.
Technical analyst Gert van Lagen highlighted the appearance of a formation of a Wyckoff accumulation pattern as a bullish sign for BTC and predicted a further move higher once this current correction completes.
$BTC [4h]: update on #Wyckoff accumulation range.
— Gert van Lagen (@GertvanLagen) December 15, 2022
Currently the BU/LPS in Phase D is being printed. This is to test whether the red resistance range now has been flipped to support.
If the test succeeds, phase E will be next ??#Bitcoin #Btc pic.twitter.com/uWjGKfYen8
Meanwhile, Cubic Analytics founder Caleb Franzen spotted a bearish signal on the BTC chart that prompted the analyst to post the following warning to his Twitter followers.
Be careful out there fam!
— Caleb Franzen (@CalebFranzen) December 15, 2022
The 30-day Williams%R oscillator is flashing a potentially bearish signal for #Bitcoin
When this indicator falls below the "overbought" threshold (upper-bound), $BTC has typically declined & consolidated.
These signals typically happen in clusters. pic.twitter.com/yVF8ZoFHR3
This outlook was further validated by Eight Global founder Michaël van de Poppe, who tweeted, “Let’s see whether $17.1K-$17.3K can hold for Bitcoin, otherwise buyers are not stepping in and potentially more trouble is going to come.”
And market analyst il Capo of Crypto continues to maintain that there is at least one more major capitulation event in store for the market that will see BTC fall into the $12,000 range.
$BTC simple pic.twitter.com/RPuI9esiSY
— il Capo Of Crypto (@CryptoCapo_) December 14, 2022
Altcoins take a beating
The wider altcoin market was in the red for the day as the weakness in Bitcoin and concerns about the wider economy weighed heavily on the riskier crypto assets.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
A few tokens did manage to post positive gains on the day, including a 7.06% gain for Celo (CELO), a 5.9% increase in Chiliz (CHZ), and a 5.6% gain for SafePal (SFP).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $850 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.4%.
