Bitcoin Calls Trader Bluff With New $40K Fakeout As Fed Decision Day Comes

Bitcoin (BTC) tested traders’ neves again on March 16 when a new spike of over $40,000 ended within minutes.

BTC/USD 1-hour candlestick chart (bit stamp). Source: TradingView

Shorts feel the burn after abrupt journey to $41,700

Data from Coin-Crypto Markets Pro and Trading Display showed that BTC/USD suddenly rose to $41,700 on Bitstamp – before reversing immediately.

Two candles per hour were all it took to push the entire market up $2,000, break significant resistance levels and come all the way back down.

The move, while commonplace recently, was not without casualties, as evidenced by stock exchange liquidations.

According to data from on-chain monitoring resource coin glassBitcoin accounted for $98 million of this in the 24 hours to the time of writing. Total crypto liquidations for the period were just over $200 million.

Graph for crypto liquidations. Source: Coinglass

While still in the midst of its established trading range, BTC/USD encountered resistance near both $40,000 and $41,000 before the latter strengthened once the pair deflated.

On Wednesday, $41,000 remained as selling pressure, but a significant increase in sellers was yet to appear at $40,000, data from Binance’s order book, compiled by monitoring material indicators, showed.

BTC/USD Order Book Chart (Binance). Source: Material Indicators

“Snooze party” to announce Fed rate hike?

Meanwhile, for analysts, the immediate past pales in comparison to what the near future would bring on Wednesday.

Related: Bitcoin Risks Final Bear Market Capitulation As Wealthy Investors Continue BTC Selling – Analyst

At 2 p.m. Eastern Time, the United States Federal Reserve is poised to reveal moves in interest rates, something many have been eyeing closely as a possible price paradigm shift.

So, for popular trader and analyst Crypto Ed, there was nothing to see until the news came out.

Twitter account PlanC, meanwhile, argued that the market was already responsible for the projected 0.25% rate hike, but that it wouldn’t help macro-inflationary forces – which are arguably advertising BTC as a store of value themselves.

The FED will raise interest rates by 25 basis points, which is already priced in and will do nothing to stop inflation. In summary

BTC/USD was trading at around USD 39,500 at the time of writing, still above Tuesday’s level.

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