BTC price faces 20% drop in weeks if Bitcoin avoids key level — Analyst

bitcoin (BTC) held tight below $17,000 at the Dec. 19 Wall Street open as skeptical traders feared further declines.

BTC traders call for time on upside potential

Data of Cointelegraph Pro Markets Y TradingView It showed that BTC/USD was hovering around the $16,700 mark, virtually flat over the weekend.

The pair saw only fractional volatility at the open as US stocks fell slightly. At the time of writing, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index were down 0.5% and 1%, respectively.

For Bitcoin traders, there was little to celebrate, and a consensus formed around the potential to test lower levels next.

“Bearish as long as it stays below $19k”, Crypto Poseidon summarized next to a graph.

Popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital highlighted $17,150 as an important level to recover to avoid further declines later.

“If BTC continues to reject the ~$17150 resistance…Then the price could drop as much as -20% to the downside in the next few weeks,” he said. foretoldloading one month BTC/USD chart.

Social capital additional that “there was still time for BTC to make a monthly close above the ~$17150 level later this month”, but that “a monthly close below ~$17150 would confirm the start of a collapse from here”.

Meanwhile, Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CEO of the trading firm Eight, offered a slightly more hopeful prospect.

With more US economic data expected towards the end of the week, BTC/USD had the potential to break higher and target $17,300 to then offer “short opportunities”.

“No advance, so I look for longs around $16.2K or $15.5K,” he replied.

Grayscale CEO: FTX was a "people failure"

News that Binance.US, the US arm of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, had offered to acquire the assets of the Voyager lender, but had no tangible impact on market performance.

Related: 'Lower wave' for all markets? 5 things to know about Bitcoin this week

The latest development in the FTX saga, the announcement came as Binance itself. continued to face what its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, again called “FUD” during the weekend.

in a letter For investors, meanwhile, Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of investment firm Grayscale, tried to draw a clear distinction between FTX and cryptocurrencies as a whole. Grayscale's parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG), had also previously become caught up in the FTX sequels.

“FTX was a people failure, not a cryptocurrency failure – too many investors got hurt. From cryptocurrency to traditional finance to mainstream media to DC, it seems few were spared the deception through false narratives and false documentation,” he wrote.

“However, we should not combine the actions of a few people and organizations with Bitcoin or Ethereum, the underlying blockchain technology or smart contracts and decentralized finance applications.”

Grayscale's flagship product, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), traded at a 48.7% discount to Bitcoin's spot price as of December 17, its biggest discount to date, according to data from coin purse.

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