Bitcoin continued to battle final resistance near $20,000 on December 15 as pressure between buyers and sellers rocked the market.
Data from price trackers including CoinMarketCap and TradingView followed Bitcoin as it retested $19,500 resistance, only to receive another instant rejection.
Bitcoin in a $20,000 tug-of-war
After reclaiming $19,000 over the weekend, bulls were convinced that BTC/USD was preparing to tackle a wave of sell trades between $19,500 and $20,000. In the event, several attempts to do so were quashed with ease, overnight highs topping out at $19,540.
A subsequent denial of further gains placed Bitcoin at roughly the same place as 24 hours previously at press time—in a zone with $19,000 as support.
“#Bitcoin tried to break the crucial resistance zone at $19,500-19,600 but failed,” popular trader Michaël van de Poppe summarized in his latest update on Tuesday.
“Lower timeframe bearish divergence is there, which could mark a further correction towards $18,400-18,600. Critical zone to hold to sustain the bullish momentum.”
Momentum seemed to favor higher support, however, with trading seeing sustained attempts to revisit $19,500 rather than drop lower.
Certain price fundamentals supported the bullish case, among them Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI), which quant analyst PlanB reiterated was gearing up to dictate major price growth.
RSI, a key indicator showing overbought or oversold market conditions, sees a major boost during Bitcoin bull cycles. Currently, its score of 75 mimics that of late 2016, a year before Bitcoin’s run to just under $20,000.
PlanB estimated that the next four months would be a formative period this time around.
“And note that historically we also stay at these high RSI levels for some time,” he added in Twitter comments.
As Modern Consensus reported, previously, statistician Willy Woo argued that Bitcoin would need a few weeks to consolidate before returning to crush resistance below $20,000.
Corporates “don’t dump $1,000 higher”
As has become standard in the past quarter, corporate sentiment on Bitcoin was anything but bearish on Tuesday.
After raising $650 million to buy more BTC, MicroStrategy was due to confirm its buy-in, one which would take its holdings to more than $1.1 billion.
Fresh on the back of insurance fund MassMutual also purchasing bitcoins, analysts were firm about the longer-term lucrative prospects of HODLing.
“Billionaires are LITERALLY telling people publicly that they are buying #Bitcoin and there are people who are STILL bearish,” Scott Melker, known as the Wolf of all Streets, summarized on Monday.
“Corporations don’t buy treasury assets to dump $1000 higher. This thing is likely going way higher. And they will still buy.”
As more Bitcoin changes hands from speculators to those corporate buyers, the argument goes that low-level resistance, principally that below $20,000, will ultimately have little other future than disintegration.
