Bitcoin re-entered the spotlight within an intraday trading span by the close of the week on February 18th, with bullish trends gaining ground during weekend trades.
Data sourced from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView revealed that at $52,000, Bitcoin’s price consolidation reached a pivotal juncture.
The primary cryptocurrency experienced a downturn to $50,680 on Bitstamp a day earlier, marking its lowest levels in several days.
However, a swift recovery ensued, adding nearly $1,500 within hours. As of the time of writing, there hadn’t been a fresh retesting of these lows.
Analysing the week’s developments, prominent trader Skew observed a shift in trader behaviour during the latter half of the Wall Street trading week.
He noted a decline in spot buying towards the weekend, with “mostly taker driven dips & bounces since.”
“So far seeing some spot buyers return here with binance spot leading,” he remarked on the day.
Simultaneously, burgeoning open interest (OI) on CME Group’s Bitcoin futures markets, reaching a record $6.8 billion, hinted at impending volatility, according to data from monitoring resource CoinGlass.
However, discussing open interest more broadly, popular trader Daan Crypto Trades highlighted a discrepancy when denominated in BTC.
“This +100% rally from October has been healthy in terms of leverage imo,” he argued.
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“Funding has mostly kept it’s neutral rate and open interest denominated in $BTC is lower. In USD value of course it has gone up during this time as the underlying asset (BTC) went up in value.”
Skew further emphasised that bulls must maintain upward momentum in Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) on 4-hour timeframes by the weekly close.
The 21-period exponential moving average (EMA), currently positioned at $51,500, also carried significance.
“In terms of spot flows around $52K – $53K area, notable spot selling into bounces which is often the case with profit taking,” he explained about the landscape on Binance.
“Key from here with current uptrend is seeing sufficient spot demand on dips, mostly seen as absorption at the lows where limit buying outweighs taker selling.”
Fellow trader and analyst Matthew Hyland highlighted $49,000 as the critical threshold to defend for the close.
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