A surge in Bitcoin’s buying pressure pushed the cryptocy past $90,000 for the first time in nearly a week on Wednesday. The uptick, however, was not driven by a crypto-specific catalyst but by improving risk sentiment, according to Singapore-based trading firm QCP Capital’s Thursday report.
Regardless, the move that began after an intraday low of $86,400 was sustained without major pullbacks Bitcoin is up 5.3% over the past 24 hours and is currently trading close to $91,500, according to CoinGecko data. Bitcoin’s bullish turnaround after weeks of sustained downtrend caught bears off guard, triggering $241 million in short liquidations over the past 24 hours, per Coinglass—more than triple the amount of long liquidations.
The S&P 500 index confirmed a fourth consecutive up-close candlestick on the daily timeframe on Wednesday, in line with Bitcoin’s bullish retest of $90,000. The move comes as markets have repriced the likelihood of a December rate cut by the Federal Reserve. There’s now an 85% probability that the Fed will slash interest rates by a quarter point in December, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
A similar sentiment was shared by users on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, where users place an 83% chance on the Fed cutting the interest rate by 25 bps in December. Despite the balance of Fed commentary shifting slightly towards easing, with four officials signalling support for cuts, two remain neutral and six are still opposed, according to QCP’s report.
Bitcoin, and by extension the crypto market, has become a reflection of the broader financial market’s risk appetite, with macro catalysts playing a critical role in shaping the sentiment. Other risks that could reintroduce a bearish outlook and trigger a selloff include a potential delisting of MicroStrategy from the S&P 500 index, as noted by a previous Decrypt report.
In options markets, institutional flows worth $2 billion were observed this week, with long call condor bets suggesting Bitcoin will likely remain range-bound. The long call condor is a defined-risk, limited-profit strategy constructed by buying four call options with the same expiry and different strike prices.
The investors’ maximum profit is realized if the asset’s price stays between the two middle strike prices at expiration, with maximum losses if it moves outside that range. Bitcoin is likely to remain rangebound, QCP analysts noted, highlighting that ETF-related distribution could hinder rallies beyond $95,000. On the other hand, $80,000 to $82,000 zone remains a key support area after the recent washout.
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