Bitcoin price settles at $26.5K as key Fed inflation week dawns

Bit­coin (BTC) cir­cled $26,500 into the Sep. 17 week­ly close after new Sep­tem­ber highs gave way to calmer conditions.

Bitcoin saves volatility for weekly close

Data from Coin­tele­graph Mar­kets Pro and Trad­ingView showed BTC price per­for­mance sta­bi­liz­ing over the weekend.

The largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy had seen a trip to $26,880 two days pri­or, this mark­ing its high­est lev­els of the month so far.

Sum­ma­riz­ing the state of the Binance BTC/USD order book, pop­u­lar trad­er and ana­lyst Cred­i­ble Cryp­to not­ed that a clus­ter of bid liq­uid­i­ty was buoy­ing the market.

“Some sell­er absorp­tion hap­pen­ing here- this lev­el being defend­ed atm,” he wrote in part of accom­pa­ny­ing com­ments on X (for­mer­ly Twitter).

Some sell­er absorp­tion hap­pen­ing here- this lev­el being defend­ed atm. Not much below it so if lost would probs see a nice flush to down­side tar­gets. Been fun watch­ing this but going to call it a night. Let’s see what tomor­row brings. Hope­ful­ly a slow week­end so we can just chill… https://t.co/NFD7qcfAnC pic.twitter.com/4gWXpEDfsX

— Cred­iBULL Cryp­to (@CredibleCrypto) Sep­tem­ber 16, 2023

Amid con­sol­ida­to­ry move­ment, fel­low trad­er Cryp­to Tony eyed two poten­tial sce­nar­ios — with $26,000 still hold­ing as sup­port regardless.

“I am still look­ing for that dip down to $26,100 and a bounce for a long trig­ger,” he told X sub­scribers on the day.

“Either that or if we just reclaim $26,600 highs i will look to long.”

Look­ing more close­ly at exchange behav­ior, trad­er Skew high­light­ed spe­cif­ic short-term trends among traders, with spot enti­ties sell­ing into bounces.

$BTC Aggre­gate CVDs & Delta
Pret­ty much just aggres­sive posi­tions get­ting hunt­ed into next week 

Only detail here is spot sell­ing perp dri­ven bounces, espe­cial­ly squeezes https://t.co/4yZFhcsYwx pic.twitter.com/KqRyRlyUHl

— Skew Δ (@52kskew) Sep­tem­ber 17, 2023

Can FOMC shift BTC price range?

Beyond the week­ly close, cryp­to mar­ket par­tic­i­pants were eager­ly await­ing the com­ing week’s key macro­eco­nom­ic event from the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Reserve.

Relat­ed: Bit­coin price all-time high will pre­cede 2024 halv­ing — New prediction

The Fed­er­al Open Mar­ket Com­mit­tee (FOMC) meet­ing on Sept. 20 is set to decide bench­mark inter­est rates, with mar­kets over­whelm­ing­ly expect­ing them to remain unchanged.

CME Group’s Fed­Watch Tool put the odds of a sur­prise sce­nario at just 2%.

As Coin­tele­graph report­ed, how­ev­er, Bit­coin has recent­ly cooled its knee­jerk reac­tions to macro data prints, and going into FOMC, some believed that the sta­tus quo would remain.

“Next weeks FOMC and Inter­est Rate deci­sions should induce some volatil­i­ty, but BTC will like­ly con­tin­ue to trade with­in $25k — $27k in the short-term…,” pop­u­lar trad­er Cryp­to San­ta con­clud­ed in part of recent X commentary.

This arti­cle does not con­tain invest­ment advice or rec­om­men­da­tions. Every invest­ment and trad­ing move involves risk, and read­ers should con­duct their own research when mak­ing a decision.