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Bitcoin logo (Pierre Teyssot/Getty Images)

Analyst says key bitcoin level to watch is “decision band” in $67,000 range

Is bitcoin in the “hope and fear” stage or is there still farther for the price to fall?

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin remains stuck in the $67,000 range, with no clear direction or catalysts, down 46% from its October 6 all-time high.

Opinions differ as to whether the asset has already bottomed out or is still on its way down.

For instance, Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, posted that “Bitcoin is in the Hope & Fear stage — which means its still not a low.”

Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, told Sherwood News that the dominant call strike is $75,000, suggesting traders favor positioning outside the $60,000 to $70,000 range, potentially waiting for BTC to break the $70,000 resistance.

“Option traders appear cautious and expect some downside asymmetry for BTC. However, they are less bearish than they were 10 days ago and would likely be long BTC if it breaks above the $70K resistance,” she said.

Glassnode chart 2-18
(Glassnode)

Meanwhile, Zaid Khan, managing partner of Manhattan Global Partners, told Sherwood that bitcoin is currently sitting in a midrange chop zone, “so the day-to-day edge is mostly about whether we reclaim resistance shelves overhead or lose the local support band and rotate into the buy zones.”

Khan said the bitcoin levels to watch for an immediate pivot zone (directional call) are $67,126 to $67,478, which is the current “decision band.”

“Holding above supports a grind higher, losing it increases odds of a sweep lower,” he said.

On the support/downside level range, Khan said that the $66,132 and $66,089 levels represent the range floor/key shelf, with $64,807 as the next support if the shelf fails.

On the resistance/upside levels, Khan is watching $69,638 and $70,673, a “reclaim that improves structure but is not the real breakout.

In addition, $72,563 is the key breakout trigger level, which “needs acceptance, not just a wick,” he said.

On the macro side, Khan said the current zone around $67,000 is an important “macro support/buy zone” region.

“If BTC fails to hold this region over time, the next major macro buy zone on our monthly map is ~48,560. Our long-cycle upside target on our monthly chart is ~204,156, but structurally the market must first rebuild above the mid/upper bands, and ultimately reclaim prior highs,” Khan said.

Finally, in terms of catalysts for a rally, Khan said that sustained spot demand, “not one-off spikes,” and easier macro conditions are key.

Additional drivers include a positioning reset, with funding/leverage normalizing first, as “rallies are cleaner after a flush,” he said.  

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Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

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