The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped to the key $44,000-$45,000 support level on Feb. 28 for the third time in the past week.

The BTC/USD pair briefly dipped below $44,000 on Bitstamp before paring some of the losses, bouncing back above $45,000 at the time of writing. 

‘Full rest’ for SOPR, funding rates

Some analysts have pointed out an uptick in miners’ selling as the reason behind the latest drop in price. 

It’s a whale war, and you know who got the real power.

US Institutional Investors
– Coinbase Outflow = STRONG BUY
– Coinbase Premium = BUY

BTC Whales
– BTC Reserve = BUY
– Stablecoin Inflow TXs = BUY

Miners
– Miner Outflows = SELL
– Miner to Exchange Flows = SELL pic.twitter.com/fhVBp8qocm

— Ki Young Ju 주기영 (@ki_young_ju) February 28, 2021

Fortunately, the third retest of this key support level may have a silver lining for the bulls. Data analytics resource Glassnode noted that the daily Bitcoin Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR) has seen a “full reset.”

The SOPR essentially shows whether spent outputs are in profit or loss at the time of transaction. This key metric turned negative for the first time since September 2020. In other words, investors are now moving BTC at a slight loss on average, suggesting that profit-taking has abated, according to Glassnode. 

“In total, we saw an on-chain net realized loss of $243 million yesterday,” the analysts added.

“That is the lowest daily value since April 2020.”

Meanwhile, popular trader Philip Swift, the co-founder of trading suite Decentrader and creator of the Golden Ratio multiplier method, also pointed out the SOPR crash.

He considers this a potentially bullish turnaround for BTC price in combination with last week’s reset of derivatives funding rates because such events have previously coincided with the start of new uptrends.  

“The SOPR has now reset (green on the chart) meaning that wallets selling are now selling at a loss,” he explained, adding:

“This is a strong ‘buy the dip’ signal in a bull market. This alongside derivative fundings having reset is bullish.”

The last time the SOPR flipped green was five months ago when Bitcoin was trading around $10,000. At the time, this was a key hurdle for BTC to trigger a new bull market. Since then, the price has surged more than five folds to new all-time highs of around $58,000. 

Nevertheless, many traders remain cautious as the market enters the month of March, which has historically been bearish for cryptocurrencies, and all markets in general. 

“I think March may be slow with a lack of confidence in traditional markets but overall I am bullish Bitcoin and expect significantly higher over the next three months,” said Swift in private comments. 

$44K-$45K remains the key level to watch 

In the meantime, Bitcoin traders are keeping a close eye on the $44,000-$45,000 level. Trader Willy Woo, for instance, says the $45K level is very strong support and expects any dips below this level to be bought up aggressively should they occur. 

UTXO Realized Price Distribution. This is the on-chain, more precise version of volume profile. The peaks represent the price where most coins changed hands.

$45k upwards is very strong support.

Any dip (if you’re are lucky) into $39k is a no-brainer BTFD.

Data: @glassnode pic.twitter.com/Z4xbEr0jTv

— Willy Woo (@woonomic) February 27, 2021

Furthermore, researchers at on-chain analytics firm Santiment believe that the entire cryptocurrency market now depends on Bitcoin holding above this key level.

“It’s been a red weekend thus far, with most eyes on Bitcoin as it has rallied back vs. the climb altcoins were making,” they said, adding: 

Keep an eye on the $44k support level for BTC as an indication to monitor for all of crypto. As well as BTC’s on-chain activity. 

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-sell-off-over-strong-buy-the-dip-signal-flashes-for-the-first-time-since-september

It was a bearish day for the crypto markets as Bitcoin dipped beneath the $45,000 mark. Ethereum, Tezos, and Elrond all registered losses over the past few hours as selling pressure mounted. Ethereum lost the $1437 level, while Tezos was on its way to test the $3.2 mark as support yet again. Elrond could see a bearish retest of $132, and a drop below $115 is likely to grind to a halt in the vicinity of $100.

Ethereum [ETH]

Source: ETH/USD on TradingView

Ethereum dropped in value from $2040, bounced off $1437 to test $1691 as resistance before another drop past $1437. ETH was trading at $1330 at the time of writing and showed strong bearish momentum on the 4-hour chart.

On the 4-hour chart, the RSI stayed below neutral 50 to denote bearish sentiment remained strong. Losing the $1300 level will likely see ETH drop toward $1196.

It has been reported that Ether’s strong correlation to Bitcoin, Ethereum’s network congestion, dropping transaction number of transactions on the network, and transaction volume, are all contributing factors to the dropping value of Ether.

Tezos [XTZ]

Source: XTZ/USD on TradingView

Tezos dropped below $3.76 over the past few days and repeatedly tested it as resistance while forming a range with its lower boundaries at $3.22. This range-bound trading activity for XTZ is likely to end with a move to the downside.

Bitcoin dropped beneath the $45,000 mark and over the next few days, the selling pressure could see BTC drop toward $42,000. This will likely see the altcoin market shed value as well, XTZ being no exception.

The OBV notes steady selling pressure and, even though $3.22 was defended multiple times, the sellers have been dominant. This is likely to result in XTZ dropping below $3.22 to visit $2.92 over the next few days.

Elrond [EGLD]

Source: EGLD/USDT on TradingView

The 4-hour chart and fractals were used to give a better representation of the important points for EGLD over the past couple of weeks.  A descending channel pattern emerged, and recently the price attempted to break out above the channel.

However, it faced stiff resistance at $140 and was forced to drop beneath the $132 level of support- which is the 23.6% retracement for EGLD for its move from $26 to $216.

The Awesome Oscillator was above the zero line but, in the shorter timeframes, momentum was already rising in favor of the bears. A retest of $132 followed by a fall for EGLD can be expected over the next few days.

Source: https://ambcrypto.com/ethereum-tezos-elrond-price-analysis-28-february

Following the massive drop in price over the past week, the Bitcoin market did hold on to the $47k price level for a while, but the support range eventually lost out to the bearish pressure and the coin currently trades around the $44k price range. From the peak of $58k, the largest cryptocurrency has fallen by over 17% in the past six days and despite the past few days’ increased bearish sentiment the coin may now be heading upwards as bullish momentum slowly creeps in.

Source: TradingView

The past week’s correction could have been the result of miners who were selling their Bitcoins since the end of 2020 when the digital asset was trading under $30k.

However, according to a market analyst, Lex Moskovski this selling from miners’ end has finally ended and accumulation was once again visible in the BTC market.

Miners have stopped selling and started accumulating #Bitcoin

Yesterday was the first day since Dec, 27 when Miners Position change turned positive.

Miners were selling their bitcoins for two months.

Bullish. pic.twitter.com/S89iBcz4k3

— Lex Moskovski (@mskvsk) February 27, 2021

The above chart indicated that the miners were increasingly selling their Bitcoin for the past two months. The Miner net position change indicated long red bars until late January when the value of BTC hit close to $35k. However, as February kicked in and the market was seeing increased volatility in the price, the miners’ net position to sell had reduced and on 27 February it was showing a positive trend.

Apart from miners selling their BTC, the correction led to massive liquidations on exchanges and other platforms like Grayscale. The largest Bitcoin accumulator lost $2.6 billion in a single day when the correction set-in. Grayscale’s holdings of Bitcoin have now dropped from $32.832 billion to $30.724 billion, at the time of writing.

However, as the miners’ attitude towards the digital asset reverses we may the price of Bitcoin gain strength at the current level.

Source: https://ambcrypto.com/how-bitcoin-miners-can-help-its-price-movement-right-now