Honey and Charts

Just now, in 2 minutes, the price of BTC rose from $68,500 to $71,000, increasing by $2,500. This is what a low-liquidity market looks like, where spreads in both directions will occur regularly. This is one of the reasons why I do not hold positions for longer than a few hours and always wait for confirmation. Yesterday, I was trading SIREN, and today they are already trading fundamental coins. We live in interesting times.

In the last hour, there was an impulsive decline in the cryptocurrency market, so much so that BTC dropped to $68,228, and ETH to $2,050. In one hour, positions worth $109M in BTC and $83M in ETH were liquidated, most of which were long positions, of course. Interestingly, just half an hour later, both currencies had already recovered almost 50% of the drop, and now BTC is trading around $69,000, while ETH is around $2,090. It looks very much like a manipulative dump aimed at collecting liquidity from below, triggering stop-losses and long positions, and accumulating longs for a further upward move. Notably, during the dump on the Coinbase exchange, sales sharply decreased, and there was an active accumulation of longs. And again, "fun weekends" that start again on Sunday night; let's see what happens tomorrow afternoon. Now the main liquidity is at the top, and this dump and how quickly it happened only confirms that the next target could likely be the bears.

Something quite interesting happened here this week. This week, gold showed its worst performance since 1982, falling by 10.52% to $4,491 — and this is against the backdrop of the war in the Middle East, strikes on oil infrastructure, the presence of the USA in the region, and rising inflation. The decline was primarily caused by technical reasons:
- the dollar rose as a safe-haven asset
- funds sold gold to cover margin calls in oil
- the Chicago Mercantile Exchange raised margin requirements, intensifying liquidations

This means the pressure came not from fundamentals, but from market infrastructure. Against this backdrop, BTC appeared noticeably more resilient this week and during the same period, it hardly decreased and remains around $70,000. Interestingly, BTC has outperformed gold in dynamics for the third consecutive week, and its technical picture looks stronger, with MACD showing a bullish crossover and RSI recovering from the oversold zone. So, this week, the 'eternal quiet harbor' turned out to be noticeably less quiet than many tend to think.

#BTC #GOLD

By the way, today options on Bitcoin and Ethereum expired with a total volume of about $2.1 billion. For BTC, it was about $1.7 billion and nearly 23,000 contracts; for ETH - about $370 million and 176,000 contracts.

The key levels of maximum pain were:

$70,000 for Bitcoin
$2,150 for Ethereum

Usually, on such days, the market is approached with caution because options expiration often increases short-term volatility. But today, the market was rather calm, and we did not see strong movement. For Bitcoin, the sentiment remained close to neutral: the put-call ratio was 0.96. For Ethereum, it was slightly more cautious: 1.04.

At the same time, the market still remains sensitive: Bitcoin previously failed to stay above $75,000, and from spot BTC ETFs, outflows of $253.7 million were observed for two consecutive days.

The main point here is that the very fact of expiration does not automatically set the direction for the market. More often, it is just a moment when participants restructure positions, and further movement depends on liquidity, sentiment, and the overall background.

We have been in a narrow range for quite a while after a long decline. Below 62k and above 70k, a large amount of liquidity has accumulated, especially at the top. If the price makes an impulse in one direction, it won't be pleasant. Events in the Middle East could become a starting point for this. On Monday morning, trading opens on the American exchange, and we will still find out how the reaction to Trump's adventure will be. Not to mention the long-term consequences, particularly for oil and gold prices. Perhaps closing all positions on Sunday and waiting it out will be the best solution.

#USIsraelStrikeIran #IranConfirmsKhameneiIsDead