Bitcoin Price Analysis: Bart Simpson pattern implies BTC price manipulations

• Bitcoin's volatility spiked to multi-months high amid price collapse.
• BitMEX liquidations, price manipulations and Binance outage are among usual suspects.

Bitcoin volatility jumped to November 2019 high amid a sudden price collapse during US trading hours on Wednesday.  
Bloomberg reports that amid the price decline, 10-days volatility surged to 65%, while the 30-days volatility in the highest since January 28 at 35.40%.

Bitcoin dropped from around $10,160 to $9300 in a matter of 45 minutes and swiftly recovered to $9,600. At the time of writing, BTC/USD is hovering around this barrier, mostly unchanged since the beginning of the day and down 6% on a day-to-day basis.

 The head of crypto-derivatives tracker Skew, Emmanuel Goh, noted that the sell-off might have been caused by perpetual swap positions liquidation on Bitmex.

It could be a technical move with highly leveraged derivatives positions getting called, he added.

Binance outage also could have played a role in the sudden price decrease. The largest cryptocurrency exchange went offline dor several hours and resumed operations during US hours. Users that had no access to their accounts during the technical issues, were given a short window to cancel orders if necessary. 

Also traders not the formation of Bart pattern, which often implies a price manipulation by large players with the aim to week out weak hands out of the market. 

BTC/USD: Technical picture

BTC/USD is sitting in a tight range since the beginning of the day. On the upside, a strong resistance area is located at $9,900-$10,000. This area is packed with technical levels that might discourage the further price increase. SMA50 1-hour at $9,925 is followed by the downside trendline from February 13 high and SMA200 1-hour. Once $10,000 is sustainably broken, the recovery may be extended towards the next aim at $10,200.

On the downside, a move below $9,600 will open up the way towards $9,300. This critical support is reinforced by the recent bottom. It separates us from a deeper decline towards $9,000.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart

 

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