‘Still early’ for BTC price peak: 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week in all-too-familiar territory with all-time highs just out of reach.

After a positive weekend, the largest cryptocurrency has avoided a deeper price dip than that seen last week, and $50,000 has stuck as support. What next?

Cointelegraph takes a look at five factors which may shape Bitcoin price action in the coming days.

Stocks set for crunch moment

Monday will form an interesting open for U.S. equities as fears mount over the impact of Friday’s $20 billion worth of block trades.

Originating from major players Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the surprise appearance of the orders targeting mostly tech stocks has caused a headache for traders. This will now play out once the market opens on Wall St. on Monday.

“Traders everywhere know the story and will be glued to their screens,” portfolio manager Sharif Farha told Bloomberg.

Volatility in stocks implies a knock-on effect for Bitcoin, but the ultimate extent of that depends on movements which at the time of writing remain unknown.

“The markets could start trading in a friendly manner at the beginning of the week,” Andreas Lipkow, a strategist at German bank Comdirect added.

“Although there is currently some major profit-taking and unusual block trade activities, these market asymmetries can currently still be processed well.”

Other macro factors include declining oil prices, though this is nevertheless not as pressing for BTC hawks as stocks. An Opec+ meeting later this week, combined with the potential resolution of the crisis in the Suez Canal, are pushing prices down as expectations of a supply increase rise.

BTC price “still consolidating” at $56,000

For Bitcoin spot markets, at least earlier on Monday, it’s a tale of consolidation.

Saturday and Sunday brought some welcome relief for traders who had watched BTC/USD descend to lows, which at one point tapped $50,000 itself.

Deeper dives were avoided, however, and liquidity at $46,000 was left untouched in favor of a return to familiar resistance beginning at around $56,000.

At the time of writing, that was exactly where Bitcoin was, still unable to tackle what has become a broad sea of sellers all the way up to current all-time highs of $61,700.

“Bitcoin scenario is playing out so far, in which the crucial resistance fails to break in one-go. Either way, that’s not bad,” Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe summarized on Sunday.

“If $54K fails to hold support, I’m assuming we’ll see this scenario play out. Still consolidation.”

This wait-and-see attitude has characterized the mood among analysts following the all-time highs. The consequences of a supply shock in the form of draining exchange reserves and a lack of selling from strong hodlers, they argue, have yet to be felt.

April gains “depend on” consumer spending

April’s price performance will “depend” just as much on retail investors as the institutional crowd, according to on-chain analytics service Glassnode.

In its latest research published last week, Glassnode highlighted an unusual disparity between U.S. consumer spending and disposable income generated by coronavirus lockdowns.

While normally tightly bound, the onset of lockdowns saw the two measures of retail investor purchasing power diverge — there was more money, thanks to stimulus checks among other factors, but nowhere to spend it.

Now, with reopening creeping into multiple states, the balance is primed to be redressed as pent-up consumer demand becomes a major narrative.

“Many households now have an extra buffer of income to spend, due to new stimulus checks and decreased spending during lockdowns,” co-founders Yann Allemann Jan Happel tweeted.

“Will they invest this into markets or pay off debt? Bitcoin’s April performance will depend on it.”

An accompanying blog post argues that the most recent stimulus checks,…