Bitcoin remains steady at around $17,000 on Monday

Bitcoin remained steady around the $17,000 mark on Monday as the traditional stock market went down ahead of the release of new economic data.

Per TradingView, Bitcoin rose to $17,425 before Wall Street opened its trading activity. The early morning rally was Bitcoin’s highest in three weeks. The token immediately fell to its daily low of $16,876 before a bullish movement pushed it to $16,965.

Kitco analyst Jim Wyckoff said that Bitcoin prices leaned on the uptrend based on its daily chart.

“Bulls have the slight near-term technical advantage to suggest the path of least resistance for prices is sideways to higher in the near term,” Wyckoff said.

However, Eight Global CEO Michaël van de Poppe said Bitcoin’s daily chart offered mixed signals. Poppe explained that Bitcoin still traded below its bottom range.

Nevertheless, he added that declining liquidity due to a sweep in its recent low often signaled a reversal in the Bitcoin market. He maintained that Bitcoin needed to reclaim its upper range to establish a bullish outlook.

“From here, therefore, the expectation is that price will shoot back into the range, reject the initial strong resistance around $18.5-19k and then come down for a retest of the range low,” Poppe said.

Once the price retests the range low and goes back up, investors should expect longer-term growth for Bitcoin. Despite the winter, some crypto investors still predict that Bitcoin will exceed its all-time high in the next few years.

Following the implosion of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the prices of Bitcoin and other tokens declined significantly. Bitcoin only hit its $17,000 mark last week, and the market trended sideways throughout the first days of December.

Major stocks on Wall Street concluded Monday in the red zone. The Dow Jones closed at 33,947.10, dropping by 1.40 percent or 482.78 points. The S&P 500 — which tracks the shares of the top 500 companies in the U.S. — ended the trading day at 3,998.84, falling 1.79 percent or 72.86 points. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ Composite posted a 1.93 percent loss, going down 221.56 points to 11,239.94.

Analysts said that the trading activities in the traditional market had decreased as investors were waiting for new economic data. Just recently, the PMI for the non-manufacturing sector revealed that the service industry in the U.S. remained strong despite a sizable interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve.

Investors are awaiting a policy pivot by the Fed. The CME Fed Watch tool showed that 78.2 percent of investors still leaned toward a 50 basis points hike in the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting.

Three altcoins post gains

With the crypto market recovering, three altcoins posted significant gains on Monday. Numeraire rose by 52.78 percent and traded and $17.71. Axie Infinity jumped by 27.57 percent, while Celsius posted a 24.09 percent increase. Meanwhile, most other altcoins remained at their standard range following Bitcoin’s movement.

According to crypto analysts, altcoins will continue to gain strength, especially since decentralized finance is regaining its footing. Regardless of the crypto winter, reports suggested that there was also an increased interest in the crypto market among institutional investors.

Currently, the crypto market cap is at around $851 billion. Bitcoin still dominates the market at a 38.3 percent rate.