3 BTC Price Obstacle Bitcoin Bulls Fail to Clear in 2023

Bitcoin (BTC) is up 42% since the start of 2023, but in the short term the outlook may now favor the bears.

The latest data paints a problematic picture for BTC price action – investors are greedy, but the mainstream is far from ready to buy.

After January’s 40% rally, BTC/USD is struggling to reach resistance higher up the chart.

As Cointelegraph reported, the pair spent all of February consolidating its previous gains, likely making it the least volatile month ever.

Based on current moves, however, this consolidation phase may soon be over – but it is not working in the bulls’ favor.

Cointelegraph takes a look at three issues Bitcoin is currently struggling with that have the potential to remain a thorn in the side of the bull run.

Bitcoin hodlers feel the greed

Sentiment in the crypto market got a serious, albeit unexpected, boost at the beginning of the year when Bitcoin and altcoins started trending higher.

By the middle of the month, the mood had completely changed compared to Q4 2022 – and monitoring tools were quick to show it.

As BTC/USD bounced back and held $20,000, disbelief soon turned to confidence that the “just up” return to form would continue – although the pair faced major resistance near $25,000 which remains undefeated.

Crypto sentiment is notoriously volatile, and even a modest trend change can turn the general climate around as investors become irrational – in both bullish and bearish terms.

According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, that process may well play out again this year. The classic sentiment indicators, which use a basket of factors to deliver a normalized cryptocurrency sentiment score, recently hit their highest levels since Bitcoin’s all-time high in November 2021.

This has implications – the higher the score, the more likely the market is behaving irrationally and needs to be corrected.

Fear and Greed spent much of 2022 in the irrational “extreme fear” zone, hitting rare lows of just 6/100 at one point. Fast forward to Q1 2023, however, and the reading is ten times higher, reflecting irrational “greed” as the overriding market force.

Currently, the index measures 51/100, characterized as “neutral.”

Mainstream FOMO is nowhere to be seen

If existing hodlers are too eager to bet that the good times will continue, outside the cryptosphere, conditions look very different.

According to the latest data from Google Trends, hardly anyone is interested in finding out about Bitcoin at the moment, even after the violent rally.

Compared to the past five years, interest in the term “Bitcoin” is near the lowest recorded levels since mid-2020.

The price may be higher, but for mainstream interest users, Bitcoin currently does not represent a reason for “FOMO”, or even a topic worth investigating.

If previous bull markets were characterized by an influx of new buyers, BTC price action arguably has a ways to go before historical patterns repeat themselves.

Whales keep the bull run in check

Looking at short-term price charts, a cloud that emerged as part of the rally continues to hang over bulls.

Related: Bitcoin ‘millionaires’ surge 140% as BTC price crosses $20K – data

This comes in the form of a concerted effort by high-volume traders to guide the spot price to serve their own goals – making a clean break with the long-term bear trend more difficult to secure.

Cointelegraph continues to cover these whale liquidity areas, which monitoring resource Material Indicators has dubbed “Notorious BID”

Its owners have a habit of moving it, with price action behaving increasingly in line with its position in the Binance order book – behavior that has been classified as “manipulation”.

“If BTC price approaches $23.1k, don’t be surprised if some or all of the bid wall is moved,” Material Indicators wrote in one of the latest Twitter updates along with a chart showing the recent movements of liquidity.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.