Bitcoin Price Top Forecast: BTC bulls get ready for a major assault

• Bitcoin stays green, while altcoins are losing ground.
• Fundamental developments had little influence on market development.
• The short-term price recovery is limited by $12,000.

The cryptocurrency market has been pretty volatile this week. Bitcoin stayed in the green zone despite wild price gyrations, while major altcoins are nursing double-digit losses on a week-on-week basis. From the longer-term perspective, the market stays within a bull's trend.

What's going on in the market

The passing week has been marked with numerous important events; however, most of them have had little to no influence on the market.

More negative stuff from the establishment

Notably, the head of the US Federal Reserves Bank Jerome Powell expressed critical view towards cryptocurrencies; however, his special concern was about Libra, new digital coin to be issued by Facebook. The head of the FED said that the coin might pose systemic risks due to its potential scale; thus, it should be subjected to "highest level of prudential regulation."

Meanwhile, the President of the United States, Donald Trump also proved himself as a non-believer, saying that digital coins cannot be regarded as money. It was the first time Mr. Trump commented on cryptocurrencies. Anyway, the community did not take his comments close to hart. Actually, cryptocurrency market players seem to get accustomed to negative comments from the establishment.

Regulation gets tougher

In a separate development, Canadian authorities said that cryptocurrency exchanges would have to report on large transactions in excess of CAD10,000. This step was taken in order to bring the Canadian anti-money laundering regulation in compliance with FATF recommendations. Basically, it means that Canadian cryptocurrency users will have less privacy when sending large amounts of coins.

The IRS also hopes to get information on users crypto activity from such tech giants as Apple, Microsoft and Google. According to the documents that were shared, the IRS wants to issue subpoenas on tech companies to keep track of taxpayers download history of crypto-related applications.

BTC/USD, 1D chart

Bitcoin has had another a volatile week as the price of the most popular cryptocurrency touched the area above $13,000 only to flash-crash below $11,000. While BTC/USD managed to recover towards $11,550 by the time of writing, the upside momentum remains weak as the market participants are wary of opening new positions ahead of the weekend.

It is worth noting that despite the decline, Bitcoin's market share reached 65.2%, which is the highest figure since the beginning of 2017. It means that altcoins have been sold off even more aggressively during this bearish wave.

Meanwhile, from the longer-term perspective, BTC/USD is oscillating in a wide range, limited by $13,000 on the upside? and $11,000 on the downside. The bullish trend remains intact as long as the price stays above $10,000 handle, though a sustainable move to that level looks unlikely.

Looking technically, $11,000 area creates strong support that stopped the sell-off on several occasions. It means that the bears are going to have a hard time pushing this price below this barrier. However, once it is cleared, the downside is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $10,250 (the lower border of 1-day Bollinger Band) and $10,000. It is followed by the lowest level of the previous week at $9,657.

On the upside, we will need to see a sustainable move above $12,000 handle for the recovery to gain traction. As long as the price stays below this handle, we are in for range-bound trading with the risk of retesting the channel support area.

The next strong resistance comes at $13,000 with the upper boundary of 1-day Bollinger Band located on approach. Though, while a move above $13,000 has the potential to create a strong upside momentum, we will need to see a follow through and a fast move above $13,200. Once this happens, $13,700 will come into focus, followed by the highest level of 2019 at $13,862.

Considering that the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on a daily chart is starting to revert to the upside, we might expect that the bull's case scenario will play out.

The Forecast Poll of experts shows a mixed picture. While long-term expectations have improved significantly (with an average price forecast above $14,000), the short-term expectations remain mostly bearish.