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(Kitco News) - The cryptocurrency market is in a much better position than it was on Friday, as the move by the U.S. government to step in and put a halt to the spreading banking contagion turned into a boon for crypto prices, leading some traders to proclaim an end to quantitative tightening (QT) and a return to easy money policies.
Stocks experienced less of a bounceback, initially jumping after President Biden announced an emergency backstop for deposits at struggling banks, only to see that momentum fade as the day progressed. At the close of markets, the S&P and Dow finished in the red, down 0.15% and 0.28%, respectively, while the Nasdaq managed to gain 0.45%.
Data provided by TradingView shows that after trading near $20,300 for most of the weekend, Bitcoin (BTC) price began to rally on Sunday afternoon and got an additional boost with the emergency announcement on Monday to hit a daily high at $24,617, a turnaround of 21.2% in less than 24 hours.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The rapid turnaround led to a sharp rise in March Bitcoin futures, according to the morning BTC update from Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff.
“Bears still have the slight near-term technical advantage as a price downtrend is still in place on the daily bar chart, but just barely,” Wyckoff said. “Bulls have some momentum and more price gains this week would negate the price downtrend.”
While the recent price movements in Bitcoin seemed to be haphazard and at the whims of traders in the market, a closer look at the chart shows that “The correction on BTC came to an end at the 200-DMA [Daily moving average]/ 0.236 fib retracement level,” according to analysts at Eight Global, who added that “daily candle closes were all in the support region we had marked at $20,077 - 20,665.”
BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
After the U.S. government stepped in to prevent contagion in the banking sector, BTC price “bounced back all the way towards the 50-DMA located near $22,900,” Eight Global wrote. “The immediate areas to watch on the daily timeframe now are $21,500 - $21,800 for support, and $22,600 - $23,000 for potential resistance.”
The main scenario that the analysts are now eyeing is an ABC correction, “with the most likely area for the B wave top between $23,300 - $24,000, followed by another correction towards $18,300. This scenario could be invalidated through a flip to support of $24,000.
At the time of writing, BTC is trading slightly above $24,000, but a strong daily close above this level is needed for a flip of resistance into support to be considered.
On the weekly Bitcoin chart, the weekly candle closed under the 8EMA (exponential moving average) after losing the 34EMA the week before, Eight Global said.
BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: TradingView
“Both the weekly 200EMA and 50EMA have acted as resistance in prior weeks,” the analysts wrote. “All in all not surprising, given that these were challenged for the first time since March last year, but especially as long as the weekly 8EMA is above us, there is a lack of relative strength. Just something to keep in mind when looking for long-term entries.”
Green across the altcoin market
It’s a sea of green in the altcoin market as the only tokens in the top 200 showing red for the day are stablecoins, which have been sold en masse by traders jumping back into the crypto market.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Conflux (CFX) recorded the biggest gain on the 24-hour chart, currently up 58.89% and trading at $0.24, followed by a 33.46% increase for Synthetix (SNX) and a 31.57% gain for Blur (BLUR).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.072 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43.6%.
