(Kitco News) - The positive momentum in the crypto market extended for another day on Friday as Bitcoin (BTC) price continued to trend higher despite the release of a letter from U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that warned lawmakers in Congress that the government could hit its debt limit on Jan. 19.
The stock market also continued to see improvements after January's University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey rose to a nine-month high of 64.6 from 59.7 last month. At the close of markets ahead of the three-day weekend, the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq were all in the green, up 0.4%, 0.33%, and 0.71%, respectively.
Data provided by TradingView shows that Bitcoin saw its fifth consecutive day of gains as bulls looked to push toward $20,000 after the close of the traditional markets, hitting a daily high of $19,920 at the time of writing. The increasingly bullish nature of the Bitcoin price action has led many cryptocurrency traders to declare an end to the crypto winter.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
An early morning pullback in Bitcoin was called “a routine corrective pullback after hitting a nine-week high Thursday,” by Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff in his morning BTC update.
“The BC bulls have gained good power this week amid a fledgling price uptrend in place on the daily bar chart, to suggest still more upside in the near term,” Wyckoff said, adding “The path of least resistance for prices is sideways to higher.”
Crypto proponents have been circulating a recent BTC update posted by career commodities trader Peter L. Brandt which claimed that Bitcoin is putting in a “low for this cycle now.”
Brandt didn’t go so far as to declare that the bottom is definitely in, but said “Bitcoin has been very predictable with multiple X advances followed by 80% declines and multi-quarter consolidations prior to new ATHs and then another multiple X advance.”
BTC/USD 6-month chart. Source: TradingView
“I do not expect Bitcoin to run away to the upside, but rather work higher toward late 2023/early to mid 2024 when the ATHs are retested,” Brandt concluded.
Insight into what levels to keep an eye on for possible short and long positions was provided by market analyst Michaël van de Poppe, who posted the following tweet highlighting the price range of $19,100 - $19,400 for shorts and $18,200 for longs.
Probably #Bitcoin wants to take out the highs soon and correct after.
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) January 13, 2023
Areas I'd personally be watching for shorts is $19.1K-$19.4K.
Building longs around $18.2K isn't a bad option, anything lower is cheap. pic.twitter.com/Aru0hBoWWW
Altcoins surge higher
The altcoin market was firing on all cylinders on Friday afternoon as the rallying price of Bitcoin sparked a buying frenzy across the market as traders piled in so as to not miss out on the improving outlook.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Micromines (MICRO) was the biggest gainer for a second day in a row, climbing another 112.58% to hit a high of $0.0114. The second largest gainer was SingularityNET (AGIX), which recorded an increase of 56.09%, followed by a 30.56% gain for Decentraland (MANA).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $935 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 40.7%.
