Bitcoin slows after five-day rally but investors feel "far more confident"

The cryptocurrency market is dropping on Wednesday, after an impressive five-day rally that has led Bitcoin (BTC) to set more than one-month highs above $45,000, an important resistance level in December. The digital currency par excellence has been unable to continue its bull run and selling has come in strong at this price level, leading to pullbacks below $43,000, a price level where a consolidation move is expected, despite the February 8th close at $44,100.

Overall, the total capitalization of digital tokens has fallen about 2%, down from the 2 billion mark it had regained on Tuesday. As for the 'altcoins', Ethereum has suffered the same fate in the last 24 hours and battles with $3,100. Despite the closes of the last two sessions of Ether - the Ethereum network unit - being above this price level, the lows of the last four days are in the $3,000 range. This indicates that it has failed to stretch its momentum above the $3,200 resistance, the Feb. 8th high.

As for Satoshi Nakamoto's creation, its historical behavior points to two things right now. On the one hand, the price is expected to be in range for several days, between $42,000 and $45,000, in round numbers. On the other, it has managed two daily closes above its 50-day moving average, at $42,500, so popular cryptocurrency market analyst Lark Davis pointed to the possibility of touching a new all-time high for March 2022.

Davis mentioned that "the last two times we crossed this line, BTC rallied 54% and 47%. If history rhymes, then we could see BTC climb into the 60k range in the next few weeks." He added, "The last two 50-day moving average breaks lasted 40 and 46 days until we saw peaks form for the Bitcoin price. So, new high for BTC at the end of March?" he stated on Twitter.

"Bitcoin's performance has been really impressive recently, not just because it's overcome a key resistance level at $40,000 but it's done so at a time when sentiment remains extremely shaky in the markets," Oanda analyst, Craig Erlam, commented. "It's run into a little difficulty around $45,500 which was a major level of support in December but it appears to have some decent momentum behind it now," he added.

The expert stated, "We could see it pare some of the recent gains in the coming days but the crypto crowd may suddenly be feeling far more confident than they have for many months."

The current market capitalization for Bitcoin is estimated at $827 billion. At the same time, trading volume over the past 24 hours is around $33 billion.