BTC price wastes no time in accelerating toward the $50,000 mark as Wall Street trading gets underway — but some Bitcoin analysts remain cautious.
Bitcoin
BTC $49,926 headed near new two-year highs at the Feb. 12 Wall Street open amid fresh optimism over institutional buying.
BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
BTC price consolidates below key resistance
The prior daily close saw the highest levels in a month as bulls initially held their own, managing $48,800 before a retracement took the market $1,000 lower in the coming hours.
With significant resistance overhead, a tug-of-war between buyers and sellers was the key talking point.
“$BTC consolidating under previous top,” popular trader and educational content creator Mac told followers on X.
“Last time I saw something like this we exploded up. I see $50,000 shortly.”
BTC/USD chart. Source: Mac/X
Meanwhile, fellow trader Jelle suggested that BTC/USD was already in a prime position to tackle all-time highs, now around $20,000 away.
“Historically, it does not take very long for #Bitcoin to reach the other end of this range,” he noted alongside a chart.
“Is this time different?”
BTC/USD, he wrote in an X post on Feb. 12, would do well to retest support again, but traders should not take the consolidation scenario as a given.
“While I think it would be healthy to see #Bitcoin retest support, confirm an R/S flip and establish a foundation for another leg up, we must be prepared for the opposite scenario as well,” he concluded.
“There is a lot of sentiment for $50k and there isn’t a lot of ask liquidity above it to slow price down if price manages to break the Golden Pocket (.618 Fib). If it does, shorts are gonna get hella squeezed.”
BTC/USD chart with trading signals. Source: Keith Alan/X
Alan referenced the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement level at $48,300, as measured from the 2021 all-time highs.
Bitcoin ETF flows fuel bullish price takes
Meanwhile, the United States spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) garnered increasing interest as the week began.
Inflows saw their second-best day the week prior, with more than $400 million in a single day among the nine products on Feb. 9.
The latest data from crypto research firm Arkham put the Feb. 12 outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) at around 2,900 BTC ($140 million).
“Outflows from $GBTC remain relatively low,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades responded, noting that ETF flows had been net positive for 11 straight days.