Bitcoin BTC Price Holds Strong Above $23.6K

Bitcoin rose toward $24,000 early Wednesday, fell but then recovered to hold strong above $23,600.

The largest cryptocurrency by market cap recently traded at around $23,663, up 2.3% in the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC)’s failure to regain the $25,000 threshold it breached in mid-February and recent consolidation “could be a sign of weakness, at least in the short term,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at forex market maker Oanda, wrote in a Wednesday note.

Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency, recently gained more than 4% and recently traded around $1,665. The CoinDesk Market Index, which measures crypto market performance, was up around 2.9% for the day.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing platform Maker’s native MKR token saw an increase of almost 19% in the last 24 hours. Data from CoinGlass showed that traders betting on price moves liquidated more than $444,000 in MKR short positions in the last 24 hours. That was more than 16 times the $27,000 of MKR long positions that investors liquidated during the same period. These types of short squeezes have historically tended to accelerate price jumps.

In a chirping last week, blockchain analytics firm Santiment noted the largest whale moves involving MKR in three months with more than 24,000 of the tokens worth around $17.4 million at the time “moving to a whale address” and a subsequent move of the same size. Santiment saw the moves as bullish.

“In downturns, massive moves like this are often correlated with turnarounds,” Santiment wrote.

Meanwhile, traditional markets were mixed on Wednesday as the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite recently fell 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was up 0.02 percent.

In the wake of several disappointing indicators suggesting that inflation remains problematic, investors increasingly expect the US Federal Reserve to continue raising interest rates in the coming months, even though a fourth consecutive monthly contraction in the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing PMI data provided some evidence of an economic slowdown.

“We want prices to rise at a much slower rate than they are now, so disinflation has to happen for that to happen,” Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at brokerage firm Interactive Brokers, wrote in a Wednesday note, referring to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell . repeated use of the term “disinflation” in February.

“We should all welcome when disinflation becomes a permanent feature of our economy,” Sosnick continued. “But for now, the disinflation that we might have seen late last year appears to have been temporary.”