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(Kitco News) - “Boring” is the word many crypto enthusiasts are using to describe the current market conditions as cryptocurrencies continued to trade sideways for another day on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced that it would leave interest rates unchanged for the time being.
While the June Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting concluded without an interest rate hike for the first time since March 2022, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that he expected at least two more rate hikes before the end of the year, which put pressure on stocks and led to a mixed close for the major indices.
When it was all said and done, the S&P and Nasdaq finished in the green, up 0.08% and 0.39%, respectively, while the Dow was unable to overcome the negative sentiment and closed down 0.68%.
Data provided by TradingView shows that Bitcoin traded within $200 on either side of support at $26,000 for most of the day, but was hit with a late afternoon sell-off that dumped the top crypto to a daily low of $24,925 at the time of writing, with bears pushing to extend the losses further.
BTC/USD Chart by TradingView
The lack of early movement for BTC was reflected in the futures market as “July Bitcoin futures prices [were] near steady in quieter early U.S. trading Wednesday,” according to Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff – who noted at the time that “Traders are awaiting the FOMC meeting results.”
Bitcoin futures 1-day chart. Source: Kitco
“The BC bears have the slight overall near-term technical advantage as a gentle price downtrend is still in place on the daily bar chart,” Wyckoff said. “The path of least resistance for prices is presently sideways to lower.”
Prior to the FOMC announcement, MN Trading founder Michaël van de Poppe noted that $26,400 remained a crucial resistance level for Bitcoin and said yesterday’s failure to overcome that level would likely result in a pullback to the $24,500 - $25,000 region.
Discussed in the YouTube update today, but $26.4K crucial resistance for #Bitcoin and couldn't break.
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) June 13, 2023
Expecting the markets to drop into FOMC and to take the lows, ultimately area around $24.5-25K is a great area for longing.
And then, we'll have to see what happens. pic.twitter.com/XgoHK0g9OW
And market analyst Rekt Capital posted the following chart highlighting that “The downward trajectory continues for BTC as price performs yet another Weekly Close below a key Weekly level.”
BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: Twitter
“The blue ~$26600 support has been lost & may soon flip into resistance if BTC relief rallies from here,” Rekt Capital said. “Reject at $26600 [and the] lower $20000s await.”
Altcoin market creeps higher
A majority of the altcoins in the top 200 traded in the red on Wednesday, with most tokens trading within plus or minus four percent of the previous day’s prices.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Notable standouts among the gainers include Trust Wallet Token (TWT), TomoChain (TOMO) and Cartesi (CTSI), whose token prices rose 19.73%, 11.92%, and 10.57%, respectively.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.027 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 47.6%.
