Bitcoin rises to $26,500, the highest price since June 2022

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(Kitco News) – The cryptocurrency market continues to surprise to the upside as Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rose above $26,000 in early trading on Tuesday despite the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data showing inflation remains persistently high at 6% in the year. – over years.

Shares rose after the CPI print as the data was in line with expectations, and regional bank shares rallied, managing to recoup some of the losses incurred in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. At the end of the markets, the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all finished higher, up 1.68%, 1.06% and 2.14% respectively.

Data provided by TradingView shows that Bitcoin bulls rallied to a daily high of $26,514 in the early hours of Tuesday, but saw their momentum fade in the afternoon, giving the bears a chance to push the price back below $24,200.

BTC/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

As a result of the early morning surge, “April Bitcoin futures prices hit a three-week high in early US trading on Tuesday,” according to Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff, who added that “Bulls have regained the close technical advantage as a The price downtrend on the daily bar chart has been strongly negated this week.”

Going forward, “The path of least resistance for prices is now sideways to higher,” Wyckoff said.

Further insight into the reason behind the move was offered by James Lavish CFA, managing partner of the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, who noted that “We’ve seen Bitcoin act as the leading risk-on asset over the past two years, in particular. The tip of the risk spear, to put it this way: It has been the first to move higher when sentiment shifts to risk-on, and the first to move lower when sentiment shifts to risk-off.”

Lavish noted that market participants have been expecting the Fed to keep raising interest rates until either unemployment rises, inflation falls significantly, or something (especially in the bond or credit markets) breaks, which may have just happened with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

“As the Fed and Treasury scramble to shore up markets this weekend, they’ve effectively admitted that something broke,” Lavish said. “And so, investors think that the Fed has taken a 50bp hike off the table for next week, and at worst be a 25bp increase, and perhaps no further increases at all.”

Bitcoin, which trades 24/7, was able to take advantage of recent developments and “take advantage of this sentiment and go to risk before any other asset,” he added. “Couple that with the *reason* for the move, i.e. fiat-manipulated monetary system failing, and we have the added boost of a flight to the safety of truly decentralized, hard digital assets of Bitcoin. There is no concern for a fraction of the Reserve Bank’s impact on savings stored in Bitcoin.”

Looking for a March close above $24,800

According to analysts at Technical Roundup, Bitcoin now finds itself above the monthly resistance at $23,300 and the weekly resistance at $24,300.

“If this price action is cemented by a high timeframe candle close, and/or as long as there is no acceptance back below the mid-$20,000s, this move would constitute a breakout from a multi-month range,” the analysts wrote. “Breakouts are bullish until they’re not.”

BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: Technical Roundup

Based on this assessment, Technical Roundups “bias bullish until either $30,000+ is reached (resistance) or the market finds acceptance back below $23,000-$24,000 (failed breakout).”

In the event that the current strength shown by the market persists, “the only way to establish a position is via intraday pullbacks, lower timeframes, short-term open interest flushes, short-term trend-following tools and the like,” they said.

Crypto market analyst Rekt Capital provided a similar analysis of BTC’s monthly performance, noting that a March close above $24,800 would confirm a breakout of the macro decline that has been in place since November 2021.

As long as #BTC Monthly close above ~$24800, the price will confirm the breakout beyond the macro decline$BTC is at ~$26000 now

so far so good#Crypto #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/nkRBcGfDAi

— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) March 14, 2023

And in response to BTC’s afternoon dip below $25,000, Eight Global founder Michaël van de Poppe tweeted that he is “not interested in buying this retest at $25,000” but is instead looking for a deeper pullback to “$23.3,000 for bounce-play longs.”

Altcoins rise higher

The altcoin market benefited greatly from the rise in the Bitcoin price, with all but a handful of tokens in the top 200 in the green for the day.

Daily performance in the cryptocurrency market. Source: Coin360

RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF) is the biggest gainer of the day, with a 37.47% price increase to $0.174, followed by a 36.84% increase for Centrifuge (CFG) and a 32.11% gain for SingularityNET (AGIX).

The total cryptocurrency market cap is now $1.11 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43.9%.