Market Wrap: Bullish Traders Push Bitcoin Over $9,100, Returning to Halving Levels

Published on by Coindesk | Published on

The price of bitcoin shot above $9,100 Wednesday in high-volume buying at around 10:00 UTC thanks to traders feeling optimistic about the crypto markets.

As of 20:40 UTC, bitcoin was trading at $9,162, gaining 3.5% over the previous 24 hours.

Trading seems to support a higher upward climb as bitcoin's price is now above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a signal of bullish sentiment.

The question for the market is whether bitcoin's price can continue to rise after Tuesday's struggle to stay at $9,000.

Traders like to talk about the $10,000 level as some kind of barrier to blow through that will result in new highs, but bitcoin hasn't been able to push past that number since hitting it for a short time on May 7."Bulls seem unable to break the $10,000 psychological support for some time since the halving," said Peter Chen, a cryptocurrency trader at Hong Kong-based OneBitQuant.

"Bitcoin must shine over the next 18 months, and I think it will. The short-term technical picture is not bad. Bitcoin is trading around where it was at the halving," said George Clayton, managing partner at New York-based Cryptanalysis Capital.

When looking at bitcoin price overlaid with the hashrate, price has stayed steady since the halving.

Le Rest senses the post-halving hangover might continue, telling CoinDesk he expects record-setting bitcoin prices in the longer term.

The bitcoin options market has an event coming up this week, Singapore-based trading firm QCP Capital wrote in a recent market update.

As quantitative traders seeking to capture value in crypto volatility, QCP predicts more rocky price movements ahead. In fact, bitcoin's at-the-money implied volatility, a measure of price movements, has dipped recently, according to data from aggregator Skew."We don't see any particular catalyst for volatility, but with the futures basis drifting lower again and USDT back in prolonged discount territory, first time since mid-March, something might be brewing," QCP noted.

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