BTC price dips below $40K as Wall Street open spells pain for Bitcoin bulls

Macro factors finally see $40,000 give way for Bitcoin price action after two weeks above.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell through $40,000 as Wall Street opened on Feb. 18 with analysts watching lower levels.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

Bitcoin falls to two-week lows

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD teasing a $40,000 breakdown throughout Feb. 18, with several attempts seeing bounces higher before the level finally gave way.

At the time of writing, the situation was still unclear, with 24-hour losses for the pair approaching 5% and volatility heightened.

The last time that Bitcoin traded below $40,000 was on Feb. 4, making current levels a two-week low.

Correlation to stocks, themselves, rattled by the Federal Reserve and geopolitical tensions, remained in focus.

Popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital meanwhile noted that February’s strength had still failed to see BTC/USD reclaim two key exponential moving averages he had previously argued to be essential for an attack on all-time highs in the future.

“Bitcoin wasn’t able to reclaim the two Bull Market EMAs, therefore failing to break into the upper half of the macro range,” he tweeted

“$BTC will continue to occupy the lower half of the macro range until further notice.” 

BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Rekt Capital/ Twitter

That macro range includes a floor price of just under $30,000 — the yearly open from 2021, since which time Bitcoin has effectively acted in a range between there and $69,000.

Altcoins share the pain as BTC falls

Losses were equally mounting among altcoins on the Wall Street open, with some of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap losing 8% or more.

Related: Here are the BTC price levels to watch with Bitcoin ‘hanging on $40K cliff’

Ether (ETH) was back below $3,000, while all but one of the top 50 altcoins were in the red at the time of writing, the exception being Klaytn (KLAY), which was up 2%.

ETH/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView