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(Kitco News) - The cryptocurrency market continued to show signs of improvement on Friday as concerns about regulatory and macroeconomic pressures began to subside, prompting dip buyers to step in and take advantage of the lowest crypto prices in months.
Stocks were a different story, as Thursday’s rally fizzled out in the face of economic data dropped on Friday that showed consumers are gaining confidence in the state of the economy, increasing the likelihood of the Fed returning to hawkish rate hikes as soon as July. At the close of markets, the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all finished lower, down 0.37%, 0.32%, and 0.68%, respectively.
Bitcoin (BTC) bulls successfully managed to push the top crypto back above $26,000, with data from TradingView showing that after a flash dump to $25,225 near midday, bulls reversed the course of price action to lift BTC to a daily high of $26,592 in the afternoon. The price has since entered into consolidation near $26,400.
BTC/USD Chart by TradingView
Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff noted that July Bitcoin futures prices were holding steady in the early U.S. trading hours on Friday after hitting a three-month low overnight.
Bitcoin futures 1-day chart. Source: Kitco
“The BC bears have the overall near-term technical advantage as a price downtrend is firmly in place on the daily bar chart,” Wyckoff said. “The path of least resistance for prices is still sideways to lower.”
While the chart data showed weakness, yesterday’s announcement that BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, had filed paperwork for a spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) brought fresh optimism to crypto holders, which may have played a part in Friday’s price reversal.
As market analyst Rekt Capital noted on Twitter, “All it takes is one bullish BTC catalyst to turn it all around.”
MN Trading founder Michaël van de Poppe also noted the positive effect the BlackRock announcement had, and pushed back against members of the crypto community that want to keep the legacy financial system out of crypto altogether.
Maybe you don't want Blackrock to be involved in the markets, but having them jumping on the bandwagon with a Spot ETF, is technically what the markets need.
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) June 16, 2023
The next cycle is about institutional investors jumping into #Bitcoin and allocating a percentage to their portfolio.
Poppe told his followers that, “The time to accumulate is now,” noting that according to the ‘Wall Street Cheat Sheet,’ Bitcoin and the broader crypto market are currently in the “depression stage” and that “times will be better in 6-12 months from now.”
Total cryptocurrency market cap. 1-week chart. Source: Twitter
And market analyst Pentoshi posted the following chart and said that Bitcoin must reclaim $26,700 – which he identified as the current resistance – if it hopes to extend the uptrend.
BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: Twitter
“Current support 25k. Current resistance $26.7k, [In my opinion] one of these breaking will determine the trend from here for the next months,” he said.
Altcoins on the uptrend
Altcoins largely followed Bitcoin’s lead and climbed higher on Friday, with seven tokens in the top 200 posting double-digit gains while those in the red suffered only slight losses.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Quant (QNT) saw the largest increase, climbing 17.15% to trade at $115.13, followed by a 13.45% gain for ssv.network (SSV) and a 13.4% increase for Frax Share (FXS).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.06 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 48.1%.
