Bitcoin Spikes above $22K as Celsius Pays Back Its Loan
BTC/USD Carves a Higher High. Are the Bulls Back in Action?
The apex cryptocurrency just printed a higher high with an intraday top at $22,400 and is showing signs of positive price movement. Bitcoin is up 7.50% in the last 24 hours and the rest of the market seems to follow along: Ethereum climbed above $1,250 (almost 18% increase in the last 7 days), Ripple is up 11.0%, and Binance’s BNB is up more than 10% for the same period.
All the digital assets in the CoinMarketCap Top 10 have posted gains during the last 7 days, except USDC and BUSD (which are stablecoins and their movement is extremely limited). This wave of bullishness can be considered a retracement or a relief rally caused by the overextension of the downtrend but if we’re being optimistic, we can see it as a possible end of the said downtrend.
On June 13, crypto lending firm Celsius halted withdrawals due to a severe lack of liquidity caused by the crypto market crash. This created a ruckus and sent ripples of fear across the market, generating additional risk aversion, which led to more losses for the top cryptocurrencies.
Over the last week, Celsius managed to pay off its $183 million debt to lending platform Maker, thus “freeing” almost 22K Wrapped Bitcoin that served as collateral. This fact alone is not enough to trigger massive gains, but combined with technical factors and downtrend exhaustion, may lead to a moderate rally.
Technical Analysis – BTC/USD
Bitcoin is currently trading at $22,040 against the US Dollar and it is still in a strong downtrend despite the recent gains. The central piece of the recent price action is the S/R level at $20,000, mainly because it is a psychological hurdle that can decide the next medium-term direction.
The importance of the level is highlighted by the time spent by the pair in its close vicinity. Oftentimes, the price hovers above and below an important level before finally deciding which way it is going to break out, and it looks like we are now dealing with this type of situation.
The pair printed a higher low and a higher high, which is a behavior seen in an uptrend. Of course, we cannot talk about an uptrend in the current situation, but at least it’s the first bullish pattern in a relatively long while.
All big round numbers between $20K and $25K will be important hurdles and the same is true for the 50-day Moving Average, which will act as a barrier in front of rising prices.
