Bitcoin bulls struggle to influence the trend as CPI nerves combine with already weak low-timeframe performance.
Bitcoin (BTC) drifted toward major liquidity around the Feb. 13 Wall Street open as the dust settled on United States regulatory news.
BTC traders spread bids lower
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD $21,476 on Bitstamp, almost matching the weekend’s three-week lows.
As analysts expected a “choppy” day prior to key U.S. macroeconomic data, news that Blockchain firm Paxos was being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) added to market nerves.
BTC spot price action thus inched ever closer to a major area of bid liquidity on the Binance order book, something which Maartunn, a contributor to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, dubbed “The Great Wall.”
“’The Great Wall’ (price support) on Bitcoin is placed at $21,500. This morning some bids got filled. Thereby, the strength of the wall has been reduced from $25 ~ $27 million to $19 million,” he noted.
Maartunn used data from monitoring resource Material Indicators, which in its own comments revealed that thinning bids near the top of the liquidity cloud were being repositioned lower.
#BTC PA behaving as predicted after the #DeathCross on the Weekly Chart. The bid wall ~$24.4k is still holding above the Trend Line. At first glance it looks like liquidity was taken, but with a simple adjustment of the Volume Percentile filter we can see ~$6M was laddered down. pic.twitter.com/2OGe7tjOpu
— Material Indicators (@MI_Algos) February 13, 2023
In the short term, eyes were on the Feb. 14 Consumer Price Index (CPI) print to move risk assets en masse.
“Thoughts remain the same since the breakdown. I do not see any high conviction swing longs until 20.3K liquidity is taken out,” popular trader Crypto Chase wrote in a fresh Twitter update.
“Today will most likely be choppy and CPI should provide the next ‘move’ tomorrow. With that said, my focus today will be on intraday $ES trades.“
A survey by fellow trading account Daan Crypto Trades meanwhile showed roughly equal expectations of the market going higher or lower after CPI.
“This is the 4th time in a row that a Sunday pump or dump has quickly retraced,” a separate post added about overnight BTC price action.
“As you guys probably know, this is a very common thing to see and a reason to always be skeptical seeing weekend moves on BTC.”
Stocks, dollar tread water prior to CPI
U.S. stocks opened the week modestly higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index up 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.
Related: First weekly death cross ever — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week
The U.S. dollar index (DXY) was undecided at the time of writing, having spent the week prior consolidating after a solid rebound.
“A big day tomorrow with CPi data release 13:30 gmt. DXY price seen around top of parallel channel with a decisive break either way to determine the next big move for Btc Ethereum and other Altcoins,” Matthew Dixon, founder and CEO of crypto rating platform Evai, summarized about the outlook.
“Preferred direction is down for Dollar which would be +ve for BTC.”
An accompanying chart showed DXY on 4-hour timeframes
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