Bitcoin bulls are fighting to hold the $19k support as all eyes are on the Fed
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(Kitco News) – Weakness in both crypto and traditional markets persisted for another day on Tuesday as investors around the world await this week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, where the Fed will unveil the latest round of rate hikes.
The current consensus is that the central bank will raise the Fed Funds rate by 75 basis points; However, there are some who remain concerned that an increase of as much as 100 basis points could be on the cards as inflation remains a persistent concern.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) was under constant pressure in trading on Tuesday, sliding from a daily high of $19,660 to a low of $18,745 in the afternoon session before struggling to regain support at $19,000.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The continued weakness from the top crypto was noted in the morning BTC update from Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff, who observed that “a price drop below previous chart support at the early September low gave the bears the overall technical advantage in the short term and they are currently working on a price downtrend on the daily chart.”
While the situation may seem dire to some, independent market analyst Michaël van de Poppe suggested that things have not gotten “that bad yet,” and is looking for Bitcoin to regain support at $19,200 to signal a breakout higher.
#Bitcoin holding here, needs to break $19.2K to actually have continuation towards $19.8K again.
Boring markets, but it’s not too bad yet. pic.twitter.com/JGotN86Utb
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) 20 September 2022
MicroStrategy buys the dip
Bitcoin’s retreat below $20,000 proved too good an opportunity to pass up for Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy, with reports that the firm bought an additional 301 BTC for $6 million at an average price of $19,851.
This latest purchase brings the company’s total holdings to 130,000 BTC, which is about 0.62% of all Bitcoin that will ever be mined. According to an SEC filing, the total purchase price for the BTC holdings is $3.98 billion.
Unfortunately for MicroStrategy, the average entry price is currently $30,639 per BTC, so the previous investments in the top crypto remain significantly down in US dollars. If the firm had purchased its 130,000 BTC at today’s market price, it would have spent $2.48 billion, meaning the company is currently sitting on a paper loss of over a billion dollars.
Mixed day in the altcoin market
Overall, it was a mixed day for the altcoin market, with the top 200 split relatively evenly in terms of being in the red or green for the day.
Daily performance in the cryptocurrency market. Source: Coin360
Ether (ETH) price continued to struggle to gain momentum after last week’s successful rally, seeing a slight decline of 0.25% and trading at $1,355 at the time of writing.
Of the top 200 tokens according to CoinMarketCap, the biggest winners of the day are Helium (HNT) with a gain of 10.48%, an 8.43% increase for Render Token (RNDR) and a 7.11% gain for Syscoin (SYS) .
The total cryptocurrency market cap is now $929 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.3%.
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