BTC price lower highs keep Bitcoin bears in control at $70K

Bitcoin (BTC) is seeing lower highs as sellers foil attempts to crack all-time highs — and traders are now paying attention.

BTC price drifts in "middle of nowhere"

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows the area around $70,000 firmly dictating the limits of July’s BTC price rebound.

Bitcoin bulls may want nothing more than a rematch with $73,800 all-time highs from March, but since they hit, sellers have maintained control.

Now, traders are increasingly eyeing the phenomenon as it plays out multiple times, sending BTC/USD downhill on each occasion to preserve what is now a five-month trading range.

For popular trader Daan Crypto Trades, this speaks to how much liquidity lies above $70,000.

“Bitcoin with a couple of lower highs in close proximity of each other. Likely for a lot of liquidity to sit above these levels in the form of stop losses/liquidation levels from shorts,” he summarized in part of an X post on July 30.

Like others, Daan Crypto Trades suggested that $72,000 is now the line in the sand for bulls to cross, and also referenced buy-liquidity lying below the spot price. As Cointelegraph reported, analysis sees this coming into play should BTC/USD drop below $64,000.

“Seeing it's also at all time high, I think once we take the June 7th high we'll break all,” the post forecast.

“On the downside we got some wicks around $63K-$63.5K which likely got some long stops below. Basically pretty much in the middle of nowhere here.”

The lower high cycle has also not gone unnoticed by popular trader and analyst Josh Rager.

Echoing Daan Crypto Trades, he told X followers that he is not “interested” in trading the current setup without a firm breakout move.

“Not much has changed here for $BTC,” he concluded about the daily chart since the March highs.

“Get a daily close higher and I'll be interested again.”

A cooler ride to Bitcoin all-time highs?

Others were already suspicious of the strength of Bitcoin’s recent brief spike to the $70,000 mark.

For the pseudonymous trader known as Horse on X, a lack of genuine spot buyer interest placed the longevity of the move in question almost immediately.

“We finally have a breakout of this range, but it is OI, not price,” part of an X post explained, referring to open interest.

Horse argued that opening longs near weekend highs would be “poor,” contrasting the current landscape with what should be a bullish long-term setup for crypto as whole.

"Market depth has shifted unfavorably across the board, but this on its own is non-actionable, as plenty of times we have trended up on negative book delta (0-5%, 5-10% ranges bid/ask depths)," he concluded about order book data.

"This could just mean the ride upward is a bit more melty and grindy before things get slippery higher."