(Kitco News) - Consolidation remains the name of the game for the crypto market as prices have begun to stabilize and show signs of trending higher while investors remain cautious following another round of hawkish Fedspeak suggesting a return of aggressive interest rate hikes.
The fact that both Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic hinted at the possibility of a 50 basis point hike at the Fed’s next policy meeting on March 21-22 gave investors reasons to adopt a risk-off approach, which led to a pullback in stocks. At the close of markets, the S&P and Nasdaq finished in the red, down 0.47% and 0.66%, respectively, while the Dow managed to eke out a tiny gain of 0.02%.
Data provided by TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) saw an intraday price swing of 4%, climbing from a low of $23,248 in the early hours to hit a daily high of $24,178 near midday before pulling back to support at $23,700.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
According to Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff, “Bulls still have the overall near-term technical advantage as a price uptrend is in place on the daily chart, but just barely.” If they want to stay in control, “Bulls need to show more power soon to keep the uptrend alive and to keep their technical edge,” Wyckoff said.
Further insight into the bullish scenario for Bitcoin was provided by analysts at Eight Global, who noted that the BTC chart shows “that we have a set of equal highs at the top around $25,200.”
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: Eight Global
“These levels contain liquidity and it could be possible that the price will draw towards those levels,” Eight Global said. “What needs to happen if we want to see that is actually a bullish flip of the current resistance area. So the scenario you would like to see is a break of resistance and a bullish retest of that same area could provide us the push towards new highs.”
On the bearish side of the equation, Eight Global highlighted the heavy level of resistance “in the form of a 4h-supply area,” adding that “we have a sequence of creating lower highs and lower lows.”
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: Eight Global
“If we get a further breakdown on the lower timeframe, it is very likely that we are going to at least $22,700, and if the downward momentum continues, then the region around $22,000 would be logical to find support,” the analysts wrote.
According to Eight Global founder Michaël van de Poppe, the Bitcoin price level to keep an eye on that would signal a continuation of upward momentum in the market is $23,800.
The area at $23.8K remains to be a crucial breaker for the markets to continue the upwards momentum.#Bitcoin needs to break it for continuation. pic.twitter.com/sqRObCVPAG
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) March 1, 2023
Altcoins on the rise
It was an overall positive day for the altcoin market, with the majority of tokens in the top 200 in the green as traders saw the recent sideways price action as an opportunity to accumulate their favorite projects.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
The top performers on the day include RSK Infrastructure Framework (RSK), Maker (MKR), and Conflux (CFX), which put on gains of 22.65%, 19.35% and 17.66%, respectively.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.072 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 42.2%.
