FX.co ★ Technical Analysis of BTC/USD for February 17, 2023

Crypto Industry News:

The Russian State Duma has just passed a law that will allow financial services markets to combine their activities with blockchain platforms that issue or exchange digital financial assets (DFA), as well as act as buyers of their own securities, according to an Interfax report.

Law No. 221502-8 was submitted for consideration to the Russian parliament on October 26, 2022 by a group of deputies headed by the head of the financial market commission Anatoly Aksakov and senator Nikolai Zhuravlev.

According to the Russian Law of 2020 "On Conducting Financial Transactions Using Financial Platforms", financial market operators are not allowed to perform the activities of a credit institution, with few exceptions.

The passage of this bill adds several new exceptions that will allow financial services markets to participate more in DFA.

Currently, there are seven organizations in the register of authorized operators of financial platforms of the Central Bank or Russia (CBR): The Moscow Exchange platform finuslugi.ru, VTB Registrar, Infinitum, Sravni.ru, Open Financial Marketplace, Open Digital Solutions and Digital Technologies.

The CBR register of IT system operators authorized to issue DFA includes four companies: Atomyze, which is partly owned by Interros billionaire Vladimir Potanin, Sberbank, Lighthouse, a fintech company that is currently developing a digital financial ecosystem with Transmashholding, and A-Token Alfa Bank.

The Act also allows issuers of securities and persons acting on their behalf to act as buyers for the management of digital exchanges. Until now, only consumers of financial services could be buyers of securities.

Technical Market Outlook:

The BTC/USD pair had violated the short-term trend line resistance and made a new local high at the level of $25,257 and reversed sharply lower. A sustained breakout above the level of $25,000 on BTC/USD is still needed in order to extend the rally towards the key mid-term technical resistance seen at $25,442, so there is still a room to the upside for bulls. The strong and positive momentum on daily time frame chart supports the short-term bullish outlook for BTC, however, the market is coming off the extremely overbought conditions on H4 time frame chart.

Weekly Pivot Points:

WR3 - $22,270

WR2 - $22,017

WR1 - $21,928

Weekly Pivot - $21,765

WS1 - $22,675

WS2 - $21,510

WS3 - $21,322

Trading Outlook:

Despite the recent rally, the down trend on the H4, Daily and Weekly time frames continues without any indication of a possible trend termination or reversal. So far every bounce and attempt to rally is being used to sell Bitcoin for a better price by the market participants, so the bearish pressure is still high. The gamechanging level for bulls is located at $25,442 and it must be clearly violated for a valid breakout in the longer term.