Bitcoin’s tumble takes investors on a wild ride: bulls and bears square off

• BTC traded briefly below the $20,000 price level on 10 March, leading to significant long liquidations.
• On the daily chart, increased coin sell-offs were spotted. 

In the early trading hours of 10 March, Bitcoin [BTC] traded momentarily below the $20,000 price level for the first time in seven weeks, causing market-wide liquidations.

According to data from CryptoRank, $422 million in long and short positions was liquidated from leading derivatives exchanges, with 86.2% of liquidated positions being long ones. 

Source: CryptoRank

While BTC reclaimed the $20,000 price level and traded at $20,662 at press time, pseudonymous CryptoQuant analyst Crazzy Blockk found that the momentary decline in the king coin’s price caused it to test the realized price of $19,700. 

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According to the analyst, “maintaining this level is necessary for the continued bullish outlook of the market.” This is so because a sustained drop below this level could indicate a significant loss in value for BTC holders.

Source: CryptoQuant

The bulls and bears slug it out in the open

Currently trading at a five-week low, the sharp fall in BTC’s price on 10 March did not deter the whales from further accumulating the king coin.

According to Twitter analyst WuBlockchain, on the same day, several BTC whales were spotted buying call options with a strike price of $25,000 in the April expiration and selling the same strike call options for the June expiration. 

In the options market, there have been a large number of calendar spread transactions consisting of large calls in the last hour, mainly concentrated in: BTC-25000-C buy April and sell June; ETH-1600-C buy April and sell June. @GreeksLive said that this may show confidence in… https://t.co/c46OmX68vX pic.twitter.com/aGW8ZfqrUf

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) March 10, 2023

Conversely, CryptoQuant analyst Baro Virtual assessed BTC’s vortex indicator (VI) and found that “the positions of the bears began to strengthen on March 2, 2023, and continue to strengthen until now.” According to the pseudonymous analyst, BTC bears remain relentless with distribution despite some cool-off periods. 

Advising investors to trade with caution, Baro Virtual warned:

“For now, seller exhaustion mayn’t happen because the domino effect due to the collapse of the FTX hasn’t yet ended, and the White House and other US government financial institutions are trying to kick Bitcoin in every possible way. In a word, uncertainty is returning to the crypto market again.”

Source: CryptoQuant

Redder in the coming days?

According to data from Coinglass, BTC has seen a significant decline in Open Interest in the past 24 hours. As of this writing, the coin’s Open Interest stood at $8.834 billion. For context, the coin’s Open Interest has declined by 19% in the last 10 days.

Source: Coinglass

On a daily chart, increased coin distribution has forced key momentum indicators to lie below their neutral lines. For example, oversold at press time, BTC’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Money Flow Index (MFI) were 30.52 and 29.08, respectively. 

Read Bitcoin [BTC] Price Prediction 2023-24

Also, the Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) was positioned in a downtrend at -0.06, below the centerline. This was a bearish signal as it meant that selling outweighed buying, thus projecting a further decline in BTC’s value.

Source: BTC/USDT on TradingView