The Bitcoin price has continued to move in a sideways pattern for the past number of days, and this is despite the fact that we have seen the Fed dialing down their hawkish tone by a small margin. Traders are looking at the price action and wondering why the price action is not moving, given the fact that there is not much optimism around the crypto space.
Background
There is no doubt that Bitcoin stands much taller than other assets if one looks at the yearly performance of the asset and compares it to other stock indices such as the S&P 500, Nasdaq, FTSE 100, or even the STOXX 600.
The percentage price gain for Bitcoin this year is much higher than that of gold and other commodities like oil. To put things in perspective, the Bitcoin price on last year's Thanksgiving was knocking around 16K, and this year the price was trading near the 38K price mark. That is more than double the price as compared to the previous year's Thanksgiving.
In addition, the fundamentals seem to have improved a lot, as well as one of the biggest concerns that traders had about Binance getting pined by the SEC for its illegal activities and the sell-off following that is all over. The SEC gave a small fine to Binance relative to its market cap, and CZ passed the role of CEO to a person who is well capable of doing the job.
The optimism spread to the failed crypto exchange FTX, whose token has performed well in the past two weeks, and there are chances that if the exchange comes back to full operation, the token FTX will perform even better. All of this is only going to improve sentiment for the BTC, and traders are just so relieved that the sentence from US lawmakers for Binance hasn’t now initiated another major sell-off and taken down the BNB token or its widely classified stable token, BUSD.
What Now?
The answer to the question of why the price is not moving higher when it comes to the Bitcoin price is that traders are more focused on major events, and that is the approval of BlackRock (NYSE:BLK)'s ETF. The decision is now long overdue, and we may see it come to light this month.
If there is a positive response, we could see the Bitcoin price crossing above $50,000 before the year ends. However, if there is no decision, we could see the price continue its momentum to the upside and may close the year between the 35K and 40K price marks.
In terms of technicals, the price (as shown in the chart below) continues to trade in its upward channel, which is a bullish pattern, and as long as the price doesn’t violate this level, the chances are that we will see more moves to the upside. The near-term resistance is shown by the red line on the chart, and it is just above the psychological level of 50K. A break above that would open the door for the price to flirt with all-time highs.
Chart provided by online broker Exness