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Bitcoin Price Faces Drop to $6.1K After Range Breakdown

The bear grip on bitcoin has likely strengthened following yesterday's drop to two-week lows.

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Bitcoin's (BTC) downside break of the recent narrow trading range may have opened the doors for a drop to key support at $6,100, technical charts indicate.

The leading cryptocurrency, which was sidelined above $6,400 for 10 days straight, fell to two-week lows near $6,200 yesterday, confirming a range breakdown.

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Essentially, the bears have come out victorious in a tug of war with the bulls. As a result, risks are skewed to the downside. More importantly, a prolonged period of extremely low volatility ended with a sell-off yesterday, hence, there could be more losses to come.

Still, the bears are cautioned against being too aggressive, as a bounce from the 21-month exponential moving average (EMA) support of $6,109 cannot be ruled out. Further, the trendline connecting June lows and August lows is lined up at $6,094.

As of writing, BTC is changing hands at $6,250 on Coinbase, representing a 1.8 percent drop on a 24-hour basis.

Daily chart

btcusd-coinbase-2

As seen in the above chart, the 5-day and 10-day EMAs have rolled over in favor of the bears following yesterday's range breakdown.

The indicators are also biased toward the bears. For instance, the MACD has produced a bearish crossover, while both the relative strength index (RSI) and the stochastic are reporting bearish conditions below 50.00.

Monthly chart

btcusd-monthly-chart

Over on the monthly chart, the sell-off from the record high of $20,000 seems to have ended around the 21-month EMA in the last four months.

So far, however, the bulls have failed to produce a meaningful bounce, despite the repeated bear failure to beat the EMA support.

The bear market would resume if the cryptocurrency closes below the 21-month EMA tomorrow (monthly close).

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  • The range breakdown could yield a drop to major supports lined up at $6,100.
  • A UTC close today below the trendline support of $6,094 would bolster the already bearish setup and boost the prospects of a monthly close (tomorrow) below the 21-month EMA.
  • A UTC close above the 10-day EMA of $6,355 would weaken the bearish pressure.

Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing.

Trading image via Shutterstock; charts by Trading View

Omkar Godbole

Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk's Markets team based in Mumbai, holds a masters degree in Finance and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) member. Omkar previously worked at FXStreet, writing research on currency markets and as fundamental analyst at currency and commodities desk at Mumbai-based brokerage houses. Omkar holds small amounts of bitcoin, ether, BitTorrent, tron and dot.

Omkar Godbole