Market Wrap: Bitcoin Price Finishes Higher for Third Consecutive Week

BTC regains $24,000 after initially trading lower.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price reclaimed $24,000 after falling earlier in the day. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading sideways and just over this threshold. Bitcoin rose 3% over the last week, continuing recent momentum.

Ether’s (ETH) price increased 0.6%, surpassing $1,900 for the second time this week. ETH’s price has increased 9% over the past seven days as investors eagerly await the Ethereum Merge, which will shift the protocol from proof-of-work to the faster, more energy-efficient proof-of-stake model.

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This year, BTC and ETH have fallen 50% and 48%, respectively, and have been tightly correlated with each other. Correlation coefficients range between 1 and -1, with the former indicating a direct relationship, while the latter implies a completely inverse relationship.

Traditional markets finished the week on an up note, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes up 0.61%, 1.12%, and 0.85% respectively.

The rally was broad-based, with about 70% of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, closing higher.

The price of crude oil declined 2.6% while natural gas fell 1.17%. The price of gold, a traditional safe-haven asset, increased 0.53%.

BTC’s weekly RSI signals growing momentum in prices.

BTC’s weekly chart illustrates a continuing trend higher for bitcoin. After sliding 42% between March 28 and June 27, the price has increased 25% to above $24,000, albeit with a few switchbacks.

A spike in volume starting June 13 implied that sellers were increasingly motivated to exit BTC positions. A question for investors is whether the selling pressure was based on the perceived value of bitcoin or driven by market-wide contagion, leading to forced selling.

The slide in BTC prices during that week coincided with a pause in customer withdrawals by bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network, and equally bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital facing $400 million in liquidations.

Technically, the narrowing of weekly candles and the decline in BTC’s ATR (average true range) since June 13 implies both a decline in volatility and selling conviction. The Relative Strength Index (RSI), a widely regarded crypto markets indicator measuring price momentum on a range between “overbought” and “oversold,” underscored investors’ aversion to digital assets but also an opening for those willing to embrace risk.

While a reading of 70 implies that an asset is potentially overbought (i.e., overvalued), a reading of 30 implies that the asset is potentially undervalued. BTC’s RSI of 25.72 for the week starting June 27 coincided with a low last approached in 2015.

This RSI implies that BTC was the most oversold as it has been in almost seven years. Investors who used the chart to generate entry and exit positions saw this trend as an opportunity to add BTC,, triggering its move upward this summer.

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk 20 is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges.