(Kitco News) - Cryptocurrency prices managed to hold onto recent gains in trading on Thursday despite weakness in the traditional markets brought about by the latest batch of economic data and hawkish comments out of the Fed.
During an afternoon speech at the University of Chicago School of Business, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard said that the central bank needs to remain dedicated to making monetary policy more restrictive "to make sure inflation returns to 2% on a sustained basis."
The S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all faced significant downward pressure both before and after the comments from Brainard, but managed to pare their losses headed into the market close to finish down 0.76%, 0.76% and 0.96%, respectively.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) steadily crept higher throughout the day, climbing from a low of $20,408 recorded late on Wednesday night to hit a daily high of $21,207 in the afternoon on Thursday despite ongoing concerns surrounding the possible bankruptcy of Genesis Global Capital.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The sideways price action for Bitcoin over the past several days was called “a normal pause after hitting a four-month high Tuesday” by Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff.
According to Wyckoff, Bitcoin bulls “have the firm overall near-term technical advantage amid a price uptrend in place on the daily bar chart. That suggests still more upside in the near term.”
The perspective that Bitcoin is due for more upside was shared by blockchain analyst Milky Bull Crypto, who posted the following tweet predicting that BTC will soon climb to $28,000.
#BTC to take 28000$ in coming weeks
— Mikybull ??Crypto ?? (@MikybullCrypto) January 19, 2023
Here's why;
One of the principle of S&D states that a valid S/D zone will have a swift rejection and pull back to it for a confirmation.
Right now #BTC is consolidating and should begin to target the weekly FVG at 28000$
Anticipating ?? pic.twitter.com/9V3AvhViuS
And insight into what levels to keep an eye on to confirm the bullish outlook was provided by Caleb Franzen, senior market analyst at Cubic Analytics.
There are three lines in the sand for #Bitcoin right now:
— Caleb Franzen (@CalebFranzen) January 19, 2023
1. The 200 day moving average cloud.
2. The short-term holder realized price.
3. Horizontal support/resistance range.
Right now, #BTC is trading above each of these levels. Until we break below them, no need to panic.
In a follow-up tweet posted by Franzen, he said “These are the 3 most important levels for Bitcoin at the present moment. If we stay above them, party on. If we retest & rebound on any of them, party on. If we break below them, the bear case strengthens. Don't stay at the party when the cops arrive. Until then, dance a bit.”
Resilience in the altcoin market
The resilience shown by Bitcoin was also seen in the wider altcoin market as 85% of the tokens in the top 200 posted positive performances for the day.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Ravencoin (RVN) recorded the biggest gain with its price increasing by 16.05% to hit $0.026, followed by a 14.77% increase for Serum (SRM) and a 13.77% gain for Frax Share (FXS).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $981 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.4%.
