Bitcoin Technical Analysis February 17: Price Compression Builds – Explosive Move Coming?

The Bitcoin price is funnelling into the point of a triangle, and the decision to break up or down is coming soon. If the price breaks up, a move to $80K could be next. On the other hand, a breakdown could see the price fall below $60K. Which will it be?

$BTC price in an ascending triangle?

Source: TradingView

It’s not perfect, but the sideways, tightening price action could be drawn as an ascending triangle. This is a very bullish pattern, but it does need to be taken into account that patterns over previous weeks have come to nothing so far.

The pattern does have a fakeout at the beginning, but since then it has held true, at least as far as the candle bodies are concerned. 

If a breakout is to happen, it would probably happen soon, given that most Bitcoin chart patterns break out well before reaching the end. It just remains to be seen now if the $BTC price will continue to bounce from the bottom upsloping trendline of this particular pattern.

A lot more consolidation to come at this level?

Source: TradingView

The daily time frame reveals the ascending triangle at the bottom of the $BTC price plunge out of the bear flag. That plunge, 32% in only 9 days, was quite extreme. There is a similar heavy drop of 25% over 11 days which took the price down to start the bear flag. It then took just over 9 weeks of consolidation before the price broke down again into the recent dip. This suggests that the price action could go sideways and up for a few more weeks yet.

Could the ascending triangle eventually turn into another bear flag? Yes, that’s a possibility. The price could rise to around $80,000 but then come back for another leg down which could threaten the $60,000 horizontal support.

At the bottom of the chart, the Stochastic RSI indicators are rolling over from the top (not a good signal for the bulls), while the MACD indicators are still shaping to continue their cross up, and little green bars are getting bigger, which is a bullish signal.

Thou shalt not pass!

Source: TradingView

At first glance, things look a little precarious for $BTC. The price is nudging down below the major $69,000 horizontal support level which can be traced all the way back to the top of the 2021 bull market. However, it is only Tuesday, and there is plenty of time for the price to turn around by the candle close at the end of the week.

If the price does close below, this would be a blow to the bulls, but $60,000 is a pretty decent support level, and this could combine with the 200-week SMA to provide a “Thou shalt not pass!” kind of scenario.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.