Altcoins Preserve Bearish Sentiment as Rally Fizzles Out

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Led by ripple (XRP), the bitcoin and the altcoin markets edged lower on Thursday after staying on the bulls’ side for most of the week.

Ripple Price Headlines Pullback

The cryptocurrency market as a whole witnessed their uptrends getting stalled. Other top performers during the previous rally, including stellar (XLM), bitcoin cash (BCH) and EOS, underwent a sharp pullback action. However, they managed to hold on to some of their gains despite being unable to sustain their prevailing bullish momentum.

The crypto correction coincided with the pullback session of US stocks. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also rebounded from their rallies as dollar regained strength ahead of the Fed meeting. While a direct correlation between the dollar and crypto markets is difficult to establish, the fact that both the new and the old market corrected in sync with each other raises questions, anyway.

With the strongest altcoins holding above their medium-term supports, their fiat-enabled pairs could also be forming bull flags. It means that a bearish correction could have been caused by day traders exiting their long positions, suggesting that an upside trend should resume after locating an interim support — a bounce back level.

XRP, for instance, became one of the best performing crypto assets after rising 26.94 percent, from $0.449 to $0.570. The coin later erased circa 14 percent from its gains, now trading at $0.507, which also happens to be above the rising channel support, depicted in orange to the downside. The interim mood should start to favoring bears upon a successful breakdown action below the said rising support level.

There were also reports that XRP rallied after the news of its integration into a global payment standard SWIFT, and corrected after the agency dismissed the rumor altogether. Any such correlation could not be established by the time of this writing.

Bitcoin Upside Capped

The cryptocurrency locomotive bitcoin also found its rally capped by its 100-period simple moving average — the third time now. The average is depicted in sky blue in the daily chart above, defining bitcoin’s inability to recapture the bulls near such resistance levels. Nevertheless, the pullback is not that severe, but can certainly extend towards the range support defined by $6,203. A breakout, on the other hand, puts the next resistance pressure on $6,600, followed by $6,750 and $7,000 in medium-term.

High Volume in BCH/USD Market

Unlike XRP and bitcoin, bitcoin cash is witnessing a surge in volume in the time of its pullback action. It should appear natural ahead of an impending fork event that would split the BCH blockchain into two separate networks. Traders are likely to hold BCH coins in hopes to receive airdropped tokens that may or may not have some value in the future.

As of now, bitcoin cash is looking to attempt a breakout action above the latest medium-term descending triangle resistance. It would allow the pair to test $663 as its potential upside target while eyeing $788 to confirm a longer bullish bias. To the downside, an extended pullback would pull the value towards the 100-period moving average (sky blue), a support level, while setting $407 as the primary downside target.

Stellar Strongest among Top 10

Stellar is comparatively stronger than the rest of the top coins, now trending sideways following the hint of a strong pullback action. The coin against the dollar has almost negated the losses it faced during the bearish correction. It is now hinting a sideways action while keeping its eyes on a potential selling action towards. Should that happen, the near-term rising trendline coinciding with the 100-period SMA could provide a decent support for a potential bounce back. A further break and the same pressure would fall on the medium-term support further below.

Disclaimer:  The author currently holds bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and stellar for both short and long-term investments.

Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts from TradingView.

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