- The Bitcoin price fell back during the ongoing session, unable to move past the 20-day SMA.
- BTC had started the week on a fairly positive note and had pushed up to $38,760 on Tuesday.
The Bitcoin price fell back marginally during the ongoing session, as BTC was unable to move past the 20-day SMA. Since the weekend, BTC has been quite bullish and pushed up by 1.31% on Saturday, before dropping by 0.89% on Sunday and ending the weekend at $37,944. The price recovered on Monday, rising by 1.42% and then by 0.72% on Tuesday, moving to $38,760, where the 20-day SMA acted as resistance. As a result, the price fell back, dropping marginally during the ongoing session.
Bitcoin Price Chart Indicates Buyers And Sellers Struggling To Establish Control
The Bitcoin price started the previous weekend with a significant drop, falling by nearly 4% on Saturday. BTC recovered on Sunday, rising by 3.27% and ending the weekend at $36,347. BTC continued to push higher on Monday, rising by over 1% and then registering an increase of 0.77% on Tuesday and moving to $37,006. The price fell back on Wednesday, registering a marginal drop, before recovering on Thursday, rising by 0.86% and settling at $37,197. Friday saw BTC remain in the green, as the price rose by 1.60% and moved to $37,793.
Image: BTC/USD daily
The Bitcoin price continued to push higher over the weekend, rising by 1.31% on Saturday and moving to $38,286. However, Sunday saw BTC back in the red, as the price dropped by 0.89% and ended the weekend at $37,944. Monday saw BTC back in the green as the price rose by 1.42% and moved to $38,482. The price continued to push up on Tuesday, rising by 0.72% and moving to $38,760 before dropping back during the ongoing session.
We can see that the MACD is bullish, but if BTC continues to drop, we could see it flip to bearish.
Looking at IntoTheBlock’s IOMAP for the Bitcoin price, we can see that BTC has strong support at around $37,935. At this price level, over 1 million addresses have bought more than 748,000 BTC.
Image: IntoTheBlock
The 4-hour Bitcoin price chart shows us that BTC had pushed above the 20-bar SMA on the 25th, rising to $36,723. The price continued to push up from this level, rising to $38125, where the 50-bar SMA came into play as resistance. As a result, the price fell back below the 20-bar SMA and fell to $35,756. BTC was able to register a recovery from this level, as it moved past the 20 and 50-bar SMAs, and rose to $38,349 on the 30th. After reaching this level, the price fell back below the 20-bar SMA and fell to $37,069, where the 50-bar SMA acted as support. As a result, BTC made a strong recovery, rising back above the 20-bar SMA, rising to $38,478, and then moving to its current level of $38,560.
We can see that the Parabolic SAR and MACD are both currently bullish, indicating that we could see the price push higher.
Image: BTC/USD 4-hour
Kremlin: Russians Hold Over $200 Billion In Crypto
Russians currently own 16.5 trillion rubles ($214 billion) in crypto, per recent government figures. According to Bloomberg, Russians own around 12% of worldwide cryptocurrency holdings. According to two sources close to the Kremlin, experts established the crypto holdings estimates by studying the IP addresses of some of the country’s most prominent crypto exchange users and a few other data points.
The analysis of Russians’ crypto holdings was carried out to have a better understanding of the crypto market and to draft new rules. Russians held roughly 5 trillion rubles worth of cryptocurrency in December 2021, according to TASS news services.
The recent estimate of crypto holdings is a significant increase over the statistics shared by Anatoly Aksakov (the head of the lower house’s financial markets committee) in December. Russians held 5 trillion rubles worth of digital assets in December 2021, according to a Tass report.
The estimates come as Russia tries to regulate the crypto sector. Over the last few days, there have been mixed reactions to the Central Bank's attempt to ban crypto in the country, with the former president, Dmitry Medvedev saying a ban will only cause more harm than good.
The Russian Central Bank had recently placed a ban on cryptocurrency, but this has since changed. The Russian government has begun the process of putting together a plan for implementing cryptocurrency limitations.
The Central Bank believes cryptocurrencies should be governed by a regulatory and restricted framework. This shift in approach came after Putin pushed on reaching an agreement on the issue. He recognized that, while Bitcoin involves some risk due to its volatility, crypto mining provides a competitive advantage to the country.
Jack Dorsey: Diem Was A Waste Of Time, Meta Should’ve Focused On BTC
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said that Meta’s failed cryptocurrency project, Diem, was “wasted effort and time” and that it should have focused its efforts on “making Bitcoin more accessible for everyone.” MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor interviewed Dorsey at his company’s recent Bitcoin for Corporations 2022 conference about how corporations could integrate and use Bitcoin.
Dorsey said that although Facebook probably started Diem for “the right reasons,” it should’ve used an open-ended protocol like Bitcoin rather than attempting to create its own currency. Dorsey told Saylor:
“This whole thing with Libra and then Diem, I think there’s a ton of lessons there. Hopefully, they learned a lot, but I think there was a lot of wasted effort and time.”
His criticism of Twitter’s more popular and successful social media counterpart should perhaps come as no surprise. Since stepping down from his role as Twitter CEO in November last year, Dorsey has since made it clear that he plans to make Bitcoin the focus of his new company, Block (formerly known as Square). Block allows users to purchase Bitcoin through the mobile payments service Cash App.
“Those two or three years or however long it’s been could’ve been spent making Bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world.”
Dorsey added that making BTC more accessible would benefit many of Meta’s products, referring to Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
“We have this open network right now. And it’s usable. It’s not accessible to everyone, but it’s usable. The easier we make it, the faster we make it, the more approachable we make it, it’s going to better everything, including everything Facebook intended to do with Libra.”
El Salvador Relaunches Chivo Wallet, Plans To Deploy 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs
El Salvador, the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, has relaunched its in-house Chivo wallet to address the existing challenges of BTC transfers locally. With AlphaPoint integration, the updated Chivo wallet is expected to carry out instantaneous low-fee Bitcoin transactions while fixing concerns related to stability and scalability.
Within the first month of establishing BTC as a legal tender, President Nayib Bukele announced that Chivo wallet onboarded 2.1 million Salvadorans, which by the end of the year amasses 75% of the population. However, the mass adoption met with numerous roadblocks, including system issues and missing funds.
Seeking a permanent solution for over 4 million BTC users, the government of El Salvador partnered with a white label infrastructure provider, AlphaPoint, focusing heavily on Chivo wallet’s stability and uptime, scalability, and social impact.
According to the official statement, Chivo intends to expand its current consumer-faced use cases to other day-to-day transactions such as simplifying payments of home utilities, taxes, and many other daily transactions in Bitcoin:
“The project has aspirations to Chivo is also in the process of deploying 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs around the country to more readily serve the Salvadoran population.”
The latest AlphaPoint integration will extend support for point-of-sale systems, websites, and the Salvadoran government’s administrative console. In addition, the update includes improved “Lightning integration for nearly instantaneous low-fee Bitcoin transactions via QR and Lightning addresses.”
AlphaPoint CEO and co-founder Igor Telyatnikov said:
“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in Bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level. We are honored to be involved in the process and provide the scalable and reliable solutions needed for this massive undertaking.”
Bitcoin Price Is Expected To Reach These Levels
Looking at the Bitcoin price chart, we can see that BTC has been fairly bullish over the past few sessions. However, the price has registered a marginal drop during the current session. If sellers maintain the current sentiment, we could see BTC drop to $38,000. However, if the price can recover, we could see BTC test the resistance at $39,000.