(Kitco News) - Matters have markedly improved for the cryptocurrency market over the past week as Bitcoin saw its fourth straight day of gains on Thursday after the highly anticipated Consumer Price Index (CPI) report largely aligned with expectations and showed that inflation continues to moderate.
The stock market was off the races following the release of the CPI report as investors took it as a sign that the Fed could potentially start to slow down its rate-hiking agenda. At the close of markets in the U.S., the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all finished in positive territory, up 0.34%, 0.64%, and 0.64%, respectively.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) bulls harnessed the positive energy to push the top crypto back above $19,000 to hit a daily high of $19,120 and now look poised to continue rallying higher as the top crypto records its highest price since Nov. 8.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff noted that the rally in Bitcoin, which began late in the evening on Wednesday, has given bulls the “upside technical momentum amid a fledgling price uptrend in place on the daily bar chart,” which Wyckoff suggested indicates “still more upside in the near term.”
“Prices this week also pushed just above key resistance at the 50-day moving average, which is another bullish signal,” Wyckoff concluded.
While many on crypto Twitter were in agreement with Wyckoff that things have indeed turned bullish, others were quick to highlight that Bitcoin has merely returned to the range it was in before the collapse of FTX and still has a long way to go before climbing out of bear market territory.
Market analyst Don Alt posted the following tweet suggesting that it is now the bear's turn to suffer choppy price action that moves against them and noted that he won’t buy into the fact that the trend has reversed until Bitcoin climbs above $30,000.
Technically in my mind, anything sub $30k is just a bear market rally.
— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) January 12, 2023
If you're a bear and you're not accounting for the possibility of $30k I think you're going at it a little blue-eyed.
We can just nuke but there is a non-zero chance we retest those levels IMO pic.twitter.com/IWtJeC4G5i
And for those looking to throw caution to the wind and go all in following this rally, market analyst Caleb Franzen posted the following tweet highlighting one metric that suggests it might be a poor decision as Bitcoin’s price could soon enter another downtrend.
Bitcoin's 60-day (2 months) stochastic has reached the upper-bound threshold, a signal that's only flashed two times during this bear market.
— Caleb Franzen (@CalebFranzen) January 12, 2023
In prior signals, the rally shortly faded & price rolled lower.
Let's hope this time is different! Always important to acknowledge risk. pic.twitter.com/aUKqTN5l73
Bitcoin momentum sparks a rally in the altcoin market
Bitcoin’s rally higher was a boon for the altcoin market as all but five tokens in the top 200 were in the green for the day while a total of eighteen tokens recorded double-digit gains.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Micromines (MICRO) was the top gainer on the day as the NeoBank-focused project gained 90.76% to trade at $0.0053, followed by a 23.56% increase for Aptos (APT) and a 17.52% gain for Lido DAO (LDO)
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $906 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 40.1%.
