A return to markets after the holidays and anticipation of Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president is building bullish sentiment for bitcoin and the broader crypto market.
The asset is up 10% in the past week, retaking the $102,000 level late Monday and reversing nearly all losses from early December. It fell from a peak of nearly $109,000 on Dec.17 to a local low of just below $92,000 on Dec.30, which momentarily sparked fears of a deeper downturn.
The surge comes as U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) raked in $987 million on Monday, their highest since Nov.21, data from SoSoValue shows.
Fidelity’s FBTC led inflows with $370 million pouring in, followed by BlackRock’s IBIT with $209 million and Ark Invest’s ARKB with $71 million. Nine of the twelve ETFs recorded inflows, with none showing outflows in a standout day for the cohort.
Trump’s expected crypto policies and broader economic plans have brought back positive sentiment among traders — bumping up BTC prices in a usual precursor to an altcoin rally.
“We believe that the demand for bitcoin is manifesting itself after a downbeat Fed outlook in late December put the brakes on a Santa Claus rally,” Jeff Mei, COO at crypto exchange BTSE, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message Tuesday.
“Now that traders have wrapped up their vacations and are back to work, they’ve resumed purchases of Bitcoin, crypto, and stocks in a bullish trend as we approach Donald Trump’s inauguration,” Mei added.
Some traders are targeting the $109,000 level in the short term before a bullish trend is confirmed, setting the stage for even higher prices.
“So far, the technical picture looks like a classic correction completion with a resumption of the growth from the Fibonacci retracement level of 61.8% of the rally since the beginning of November,” shared Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro chief market analyst, in an email. “This scenario will be confirmed if the historical highs of around $109,000 are confidently breached. At the same time, we expect Bitcoin’s growth to accelerate after the $100,000 mark.”
Fibonacci levels are a technical analysis tool to identify potential support and resistance points where price movements might pause or reverse. Some traders believe that tracking Fibonacci levels can offer predictive value in identifying key price levels — which may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes price reactions in the market.
As such, market volatility is expected to stay low until the U.S. Nonfarm payrolls (NFP) report on Friday, which some believe will kick-start the new trading year with “decision-makers fully back at work,” per Augustine Fan, head of insights at SOFA.
Strong NFP data could strengthens the U.S. dollar, potentially leading to higher interest rates, which can negatively affect risk assets like stocks and bitcoin.
“However, the highest volatility event for the month is priced to be FOMC at the end of the month as the economic stats are priced to show ‘soft landing’ signs soon,” Fan added.
BTC trades just above $101,600 in Asian morning hours Tuesday, up 2% in the past 24 hours. The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market cap is up 0.53%.
