Bitcoin (BTC) teetered in its tight trading range at the open on Wall Street on September 29, as official data put the US economy in a recession.
The United States meets the technical definition of a recession
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed that the BTC/USD pair was still hovering just above $19,000 at the time of writing.
The pair has weathered gloomy US figures, with second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimated at -0.6%. This, despite White House protests to the contrary, meant that the US met the standard criteria for a recession: two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
“Everyone talks about recessions as if they should never happen,” reacted financial commentary resource The Kobeissi Letter.
“Any economy that is healthy in the long run will have many recessions. If you never have a recession, you only have a bubble. In this case, we only have a bubble and a recession. Fake markets don’t work.”
Analyzing the situation in Europe, meanwhile, Robin Brooks, Chief Economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), warned that a “deep” recession was also about to hit the Eurozone on consumer confidence data.
“With the second quarter GDP revision in the negative, let us remember that the White House has declared that this is not the definition of a recession,” continuous the popular Unusual Whales Twitter account about the confusion of what constitutes a recession that began earlier this year.
“Rather, they advocate the NBER, which is ‘a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy lasting more than a few months.'”
The development comes after the Bank of England intervened sharply in the UK bond market, returning to quantitative easing (QE) in a move reminiscent of the atmosphere of Bitcoin’s birth.
The $19,000 level looks shaky
However, Bitcoin price action managed to avoid any significant volatility as the numbers streamed in, even with the monthly close a day away.
At the time of writing this article, The BTC/USD pair was attempting to break out of the $19,000 support.
Although the GDP result of -0.6% was better than the forecast of -0.9%, the on-chain analysis resource Material Indicators had no reason to celebrate.
Alongside a screenshot of the order book for the BTC/USD pair on Binance, Material Indicators warned that the bottom of the market was “not there”.
“Strong economic report means Fed tightening hasn’t had much to any impact yet. Translation: More aggressive rate hikes through Q4 and into 2023,” predicted in part of the comments accompanying the report.
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