Autor Cointelegraph By William Suberg

Bitcoin (BTC) checked its latest advance on Wednesday’s Wall Street open as Russia repercussions continued to play out. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingViewStocks sour crypto recoveryData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD falling back towards the $38,000 mark during Feb. 23, having earlier reached $39,200 highs.Pressure from the Russia-Ukraine conflict remained an ever-present threat to equities, with which both Bitcoin and altcoins are closely correlated.The S&P 500 traded down 0.25% in its first hour, while Russia’s MOEX index furthered heavy losses from Tuesday, down another 7.3% at the time of writing.The Russian ruble continued its decline in step, accelerating past 80 to the dollar on news that the United Kingdom would stop Russian businesses clearing in either dollars or British pound sterling.With much uncertainty in the air, market participants looking for low-timeframe shots were having to reassess their approach on a constant basis.Bitcoin Bullish Inverse Head and shoulders bottom forming good risk reward entry here with stop at $34K pic.twitter.com/fk8N6fAwQo— Will Meade (@realwillmeade) February 23, 2022″Am bullish BTC over next few months,” Blockware lead insights analyst William Clemente tweeted on the day about the longer-term macro prognosis. “Strong holding behavior on-chain paired with a lot of relative dry powder sitting on exchanges, stacked bidside in order books, & prolonged regime of spot premium over perps. March will be here next week, max hawkishness likely priced in.”In terms of Bitcoin continuing to follow global equities, meanwhile, Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, argued that it was not all bad news for those hoping that Bitcoin would decouple to become an asymmetric hedge against global uncertainty.”Good News: BTC is getting adopted by traditional institutions. Its ownership is changing by new players who trade stocks. Bad News: BTC is not a safe-haven asset. For now,” he summarized.Supply delta hints at possible price U-turnTurn to on-chain metrics, however, and Bitcoin looked decidedly more promising, as Clemente had hinted.Related: ‘You’d better buy some Bitcoin’ — BTC figures defy Canada gov’t as ETF assets hit recordIn focus on Wednesday was the supply delta metric, which looks at the portion of the BTC supply held by short-term and long-term holders respectively.Its creator, Capriole founder Charles Edwards, notes that while “not perfect,” supply delta has been able to call at least local price tops. As of this week, it was printing a bottom for long-term holder share, which traditionally appears around price bottoms.Long-term holders are defined as wallets with no selling in the past 155 days, while short-term holders  conversely sell during that period.Price tops seem to immediately follow peaks in short-term supply.”From a supply side, suggests Bitcoin is in a major accumulation zone,” Edwards commented.Bitcoin supply delta annotated chart. Source: Charles Edwards/ Twitter

Bitcoin (BTC) began to see much-welcomed volatility to the upside on Feb. 23 as European markets opened with modest upside.BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView$39,600 set to spark “heavy resistance”Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD rapidly gaining Wednesday, hitting $39,000 before consolidating.The pair had staged a steady comeback overnight, with progress totalling 6.8% versus Tuesday’s lows.”Seems I’m not getting that little pull back but continuation higher already. Doesn’t change the structure really much. $40k is key level,” popular trader Crypto Ed reacted. Previously, Crypto Ed had warned that any push towards the $40,000 could well end up as a relief bounce followed by an even deeper correction than that seen this week. Summarizing the short-term scenario, meanwhile, fellow trader and analyst Matthew Hyland presented $36,300 and $33,000 as the support levels in play. For him, $39,600 was once again the upside resistance zone to clear, as it had been earlier in February.BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Matthew Hyland/ Twitter”Expect heavy resistance and likely rejection in the 39.5-40k area if we get there,” Twitter account Cheds added.After Tuesday’s lows entered, analytics tool Material Indicators had meanwhile eyed an uptick in buyer behavior after days of indecision.Market buyers finally got off their hands and started pushing the green button. Marked up another FireChart to help you interpret the intraday moves. #BTC #Datavisualization #Crypto #tradingstrategy https://t.co/zw0ufgPIMt pic.twitter.com/rrpBB05vS2— Material Indicators (@MI_Algos) February 22, 2022Market buyers finally got off their hands and started pushing the green button,” it announced on Twitter alongside a chart showing increasing order volumes of both large and small buys.A look at order book data from major exchange Binance on Wednesday meanwhile showed BTC/USD beginning to tackle a band of resistance with its latest move higher.Binance order book data chart. Source: Material IndicatorsAltcoins bounce back with ‘altseason’ talk in the airA good day was being had by altcoins on Wednesday, with major tokens beating Bitcoin’s own solid 24-hour performance.Related: ‘You’d better buy some Bitcoin’ — BTC figures defy Canada gov’t as ETF assets hit recordEther (ETH) was up 6.1% to $2,700 at the time of writing, indicative of many of the top-ten cryptocurrencies by market cap.ETH/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingViewThe list was led by another solid run from Terra (LUNA), which gained 14% over the same period, followed by Avalanche (AVAX) on 11.8% and Cardano (ADA) on 9.7%. Talk of an upcoming “altseason,” meanwhile, also remained popular on social media.