Bitcoin Pulls Back Sharply After Touching $70K

In what's become a familiar pattern over the past few months, a rally in bitcoin {{BTC}} to a key level was met with a wave of selling as the price during Monday morning U.S. hours quickly plunged more than 3% after pushing above $70,000 for the first time since early June.

At press time, bitcoin was changing hands at $67,800, roughly flat over the past 24 hours. The broader CoinDesk 20 Index was higher by 1.1% over the same time frame, helped along by sizable gains for bitcoin cash {{BCH}}, litecoin {LTC}} and solana {{SOL}}.

Traders will be familiar with this price pattern in 2024, which first manifested itself in mid-January when bitcoin climbed to a multi-year high of $47,000 just after the spot ETFs opened for trade. That move higher was reversed within minutes and bitcoin days later had tumbled below $40,000 before the uptrend began anew.

Similar price action was seen in early March after bitcoin pushed to a what was then a new all-time high above $69,000 and just hours later found itself below $60,000. Later that month, a move to another record above $73,500 was snuffed out in quick fashion and more than four months later that level hasn't again been challenged.

While the above might be frustrating to leveraged traders and their profit and loss, technicians might note a pattern as each of those examples shows higher highs and higher lows – the sort of "up and to the right" chart that bulls like to see.

Indeed, earlier in July, bitcoin plunged below $54,000 as a German government entity began unloading its stash of 50,000 tokens seized as part of a criminal case. Yet just a couple of days before August hits, bitcoin is poised to close the month with a sizable gain from the $63,000 area in which it begun.

Read more: The Clock Has Ticked on Bitcoin's Post Halving Surge, 100 Days After the Latest Quadrennial Halving