Bitcoin (BTC) approached $17,000 on Jan. 3 as Wall Street’s first open of the year loomed.
Consensus Building for a New Attack at $17,000
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed the BTC/USD pair reached highs of $16,766 on Bitstamp, its best performance since Dec. 27.
Analysts and traders eagerly awaited the start of operations on Wall Street, after European stocks posted gains the day before and US futures did the same.
As Cointelegraph reported, both equities and gold had looked considerably more palatable than Bitcoin since the FTX crash in November.
“If BTC is finally ready to join the party, I could see it run to $17,300 ~ as drawn below”, wrote popular Crypto trader Chase in part of his Jan. 2 analysis.
His colleague Cold Blooded Shiller as well pointed $17,300 as an interest target for bulls in case the S&P 500 in particular plays in their favor.
“Despite a market-wide bounce, BTC is still below the key ~$17,300 resistance”, added Rekt Capital on the monthly chart of the BTC/USD pair.
Before opening, The US dollar began to experience volatility, reversing a day of rapid gains that sent the US Dollar Index (DXY) above 104.8 for the first time since mid-December.
“Local move above the weekly from the support that had been marked in the USD/EUR pair,” the PA Luckshury trader wrote in a upgrade of the day
“If it can stay above the weekly, I would expect more upside in DXY and therefore a move lower in ES/Crypto. This again is based on whether you can hold that weekly level at support.”
BTC Avoids Rising DCG Tensions
Internal events, meanwhile, had remarkably little impact on BTC’s strength, manifesting itself in the form of concern over potential problems for Digital Currency Group (DCG).
Amid continuing doubts about the fate of the conglomerate group of companies, including Grayscale, operator of the largest institutional Bitcoin investment vehicle, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), one client in particular has publicly criticized DCG.
In a open letter to DCG CEO Bary Silbert, Carmeron Winklevoss, co-founder of Exchange Gemini, demanded answers.
Gemini funds locked up since the FTX debacle began amount to nearly $1 billion, Winklevoss said, repeating the need for DCG to meet the January 8 deadline to “resolve this issue.”
Silbert, previously vocal on social media, had not yet responded to the letter at the time of writing.
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