What could rile investors more than a capitulation in stocks and crypto is sideways trading “for a long time.”
Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated below $40,000 on May 5 after U.S. economic policy excitement saw a spike to one-week highs.
BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView
Fed sparks little crypto reaction
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed an overnight peak of $40,050 on Bitstamp following comments from the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell.
The U.S. central bank had conformed to market expectations with a 0.5% key rate hike, also suggesting that similar repeat hikes would follow.
With that, a modest market rally left Bitcoin eerily lacking volatility in what was a strong contrast to previous Fed pronouncements on topics such as inflation.
While many expected risk assets en masse — including crypto — to deflate under the new policy, not everyone believed that such a scenario would cause investors maximum discomfort.
“With so many people calling for melt ups and melt downs, maybe the pain trade is to chop sideways in risk assets for a long time,” economist Lyn Alden argued.
Bitcoin circles likewise were not expecting major trend changes. Ben Lilly, a token economist at Jarvis Labs, highlighted low funding rates on BTC derivatives markets.
“Market saw some relief with Powell’s comments. But will it continue for the crypto market? To start, funding rates have been negative for a long period of time. This tends to happen at range lows,” he wrote in a series of tweets.
“A good structure for any upward momentum that begins here.”
Lilly added, however, that a lack of accumulation from whales at current price levels was “not what we hoped to see.”
“Max pain” for Bitcoin still far away
Focusing on lower timeframes, popular trader Crypto Ed held out for a fresh push above the $40,000 mark on May 5.
Related: Bitcoin pushes to $40K, but are bulls strong enough to win Friday’s $735M options expiry?
For him, BTC/USD was in line to hit $40,800, and while there were “plenty of reasons” to discount a more significant climb, it was still an option.
2/2
No, this is not a bold call for $43.5k in 1 go and before end of the week.
Will explain the chart above in today’s video.
This is the most ideal scenario while there are plenty of reasons to think this is impossible.
Will try to do YT before 10am, otherwise early afternoon
— Ed_NL (@Crypto_Ed_NL) May 5, 2022
In terms of BTC price capitulation scenarios, meanwhile, on-chain monitoring resource Whalemap repeated its previous assertion that the area between $25,000 and $27,000 would constitute “max pain” for Bitcoin hodlers.
“A lot of liquidity and stop losses are stacked there,” it explained as part of Twitter comments.
BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Whalemap/ Twitter
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