Bitcoin price is currently trading at slightly above $26,000 per coin, but is still reeling after last week’s 10% single day selloff. The situation looks dire for crypto bulls who were hoping for a more significant recovery to begin after such prolonged sideways.
However, the bullish market structure remains unbroken. Let’s take a closer look at what exactly this means and why the 2023 uptrend is still intact.
Recapping Recent BTCUSD Volatility
After a solid start to 2023 – certainly a year that’s been kinder to the king of cryptocurrency than 2022 – BTCUSD has bears celebrating and bulls kicking their wounds. Several months of sideways price action and dwindling volatility ended with a bang as expected, but the move was down and not what bulls had been hoping for.
A sharp, 10% intraday selloff caused more long liquidations than the FTX collapse, and sent the Relative Strength Index immediately into the most oversold territory in all of 2023. But even with all the carnage, Bitcoin remains in a near-term uptrend with a bullish market structure.
Bitcoin's uptrend is still intact | BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Why Bitcoin Price Remains In A Structural Uptrend
By pure definition, an uptrend is a series of higher highs and higher lows. Which is precisely what is still happening in BTCUSD price action throughout 2023. Currently, the FTX collapse in November 2022 was the local “low” of the downtrend. In contrast, a downtrend is a series of lower lows and lower highs. Once a new high was made in early 2023 and then a higher low was put in, the downtrend was considered over.
The recent 2023 uptrend in Bitcoin hasn’t yet made a lower low after a lower high. Even a possible lower low beyond here is still without a proper lower high. This means that the top cryptocurrency by market cap could potentially bounce here, or even lower, and still maintain an overall bullish market structure.
A lower low would still be important, potentially warning that the market structure is turning back bearish. If a lower low happens below the $25,000 low from June 2023, then it will be all eyes on if a lower high is to follow.
The 2023 uptrend in Bitcoin has been muted compared to what the cryptocurrency is capable of. BTCUSD is up roughly 50% during the first roughly nine months of the year. The final nine months of 2020, for example, had over 900% ROI by comparison. Could this type of returns soon be on the way? Or will the cryptocurrency market fall back into the clutches of bears?
This chart originally appeared in Issue #18 of CoinChartist VIP. Subscribe for free.
