Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at its highest levels in over two months, but the phrase on every trader’s mouth is “bull trap”.
After offering 25% returns in a single week, The BTC/USD pair remains under suspicion among the survivors of the Bitcoin bear market.
The Bitcoin bull trap is not convincing
It has been called the “biggest bull trap” ever, and despite holding above $20,000, BTC’s price action is fooling no one.
This week, With Wall Street closed until January 17, after-hours trading continues to support higher levels, but it is hard to have faith that they will hold for long.
For those who watched drop after drop throughout 2022, culminating in the FTX scandal, it seems simply too good to be true that Bitcoin is now turning bullish.
That is the current result of the Cointelegraph Twitter poll asking market participants and other Twitter users if the latest bull run has legs.
At the time of writing this, only 38.6% of more than 5,000 respondents believe so, with most agreeing that the $21,000 price for the BTC/USD pair is a “bull trap.”
A bull run or bull trap?
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) January 16, 2023
They are by no means the only ones.
“By the time they realize that this rally is just a bearish squeeze and not a real buy, it will be too late. Once again, the biggest bull trap I’ve ever seen.”, wrote the popular Il Capo of Crypto in a debate over the weekend.
Equally skeptical was analyst Toni Ghinea, who coincided with the description of “bull trap”.
“People are bullish. You know what will happen next,” addedhaving foretold also that the BTC/USD pair would drop to $14,000 sometime in 2023.
“The very personification of disbelief”
Others, for their part, are less categorical in their assessments of the market, but are silent on the likelihood that the rally will last.
The Pentoshi Trader forecast last week “a good dose of volatility and wild moves both ways in the short term,” while Jeff Ross, founder and CEO of Vailshire Capital Management, said “only time will tell.”
“Regime change or bull trap?” I was asking as the BTC/USD pair neared its first weekly close above the 200-day moving average in months.
Investor and entrepreneur Alistair Milne, a veteran of the Bitcoin markets, however, had a message for those still undecided.
Weekend tweeted: “I see a lot of ‘I don’t trust this rally’ or ‘this is a bull trap’ or ‘why is this making me uncomfortable’.”
“This is the very epitome of the ‘disbelief’ stage of a market cycle. Bitcoin bear markets end with face-melting rallies (typically 2x from lows).”
An accompanying chart showed the ever-popular “Wall Street Cheat Sheet,” with Milne arguing that Bitcoin was at the start of a new bull run. As Cointelegraph reported, not everyone agrees, even on this.
At the time of writing, the BTC/USD pair was trading at $20,800 on Bitstamp, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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