Relief or more dumpage? That’s the question. Bitcoin is cagily creeping sideways to start the week, with seemingly no clear analytical consensus on which way it’s going to swing next.

Crypto chart watchers have plenty to look at and consider but, then again, bearish macro conditions probably continue to hold the steering wheel for now, as the five-day World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland kicks into gear.

Let’s take a look at the price action and some of the more prominent analysis doing the rounds so far this week…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at roughly US$1.36 trillion, up 1.4% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Source: CoinGecko.com

At the time of writing, the crypto majors are travelling pretty steadily on cruise control. Often whenever that happens, it feels like something’s brewing, even though we’ve seen long consolidation ranging from Bitcoin in the past.

The OG crypto has been locked in between US$30k and about US$30.6k for much of the past 24 hours, finding some strength since posting a record eighth weekly red candle close.

Looking at the US Dollar Index (DXY), though, and it’s been trending lower the past couple of days (-1.04%), while the S&P 500 is doing the opposite (+1.61%). And that’s exactly the kind of yin/yang scenario Bitcoin and crypto likes to see.

As Wellington-based crypto investor and YouTuber Lark Davis points out here, the DXY has been floating around in “overbought” territory according to its RSI (relative strength index) metric…

Popular analyst Rekt Capital posted a thread the other day, however, that provides further food for thought – for bears and bottom seekers alike.

In it, the pseudonymous, possibly British, chart fiend provided in-depth historical analysis that suggests whenever a Bitcoin “death cross” occurs (the last one for BTC was in January), the asset experiences downside leading into it, and then most often about an equal amount of further downside beyond.

A death cross is when when a short-term moving average (e.g. the 50-day simple moving average) crosses below a longer term trend, (e.g. the 200-day SMA). It’s commonly regarded as a lagging indicator, meaning much of the downwards price action occurs before the actual crossover on the chart.

In his summary of examples below, you can see there are two anomalies, where significant upside occurred shortly after Bitcoin death crosses, when crypto was either entering or already firmly in bull-market territory.

It seems to be widely regarded we’re well and truly operating within a bear market now, and actually have been for some time, so perhaps the bottom of the bear is closer than not.

But… odds could still be in favour of further downside before we get there, judging by Rekt Capital’s analysis.

A 43% drop beyond the January death cross would definitely be on the low side, historically speaking. But as Mr Capital points out, if that were to happen, it’d bring BTC down to about the US$22,000 level, which is sitting bang on a longterm trendline of support. And that’d be a thing of statistical beauty for crypto chart fanciers.

That’s not to say a more devastating 84% drawdown is off the table… which would be pretty enticing stuff for anyone who views sub US$20k levels as a golden-opportunity entry point.

But what about that relief rally? Can’t we have one of those first? Yeah, why not, says the fellow Twitter-dwelling analyst IncomeSharks…

Hang on… you got something else, Rekt? Okay, we’ll give you the last word on this…

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$11.7 billion to about US$459 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

Loopring (LRC), (market cap: US$782 million) +28%

• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$1.47 billion) +18%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$1.25 billion) 17%

• NEO (NEO), (mc: US$862 million) 15%

Ethereum Classic (ETC), (mc: US$3.2 billion) 14%

 

DAILY… MEH 

• BitDAO (BIT), (market cap: US$754 million) 0.2%

• LEO Token (LEO), (mc: US$4.6 billion) 0.3%

• PAX Gold (PAXG), (mc: US$618 million) 0.4%

NEXO (NEXO), (mc: US$748 million) 0.5%

• Zilliqa (ZIL), (mc: US$821 million) 0.5%

 

Uppers and downers: lower caps

Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…

DAILY PUMPERS

• Anchor Protocol (ANC), (market cap: US$108 million) +119%

• ChainX (PCX), (mc: US$68m) +43%

• Request (REQ), (mc: US$120m) +37%

• Augur (REP), (mc: US$88m) +35%

DEI (DEI), (mc: US$64m) +31%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

Gods Unchained (GODS), (market cap: US$29m) -18%

Market Making Pro (MMPRO), (mc: US$22m) -14%

• OpenDAO (SOS), (mc: US$21m) -13%

AIOZ Network (AIOZ), (mc: US$57m) -12%

Tellor (TRB), (mc: US$25m) -6%

 

Around the blocks

You know what, you probably could’ve skipped all that analysis of analysis further above. These two kids whacking each other over the head with soft footwear is probably about as close as anything else to providing an accurate summary of the crypto market this year…

Bottom in sight or not… crypto builders gonna keep building… as “kmoney” seemed to be sick of hearing at Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeCon Web3/NFT/pop culture conference, which wrapped up yesterday.