(Kitco News) - The crypto market saw its second straight day of gains on Tuesday despite hawkish comments from Fed Chair Powell that interest rates will continue to rise until the central bank gets a handle on inflation.
Stock, likewise, finished the day on a positive note with shares of Coinbase (COIN) climbing 13% after the crypto exchange revealed that it would be cutting nearly 1,000 jobs as part of a restructuring plan. At the close of markets in the U.S., the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq were all in the green, up 0.70%, 0.56% and 1.01%, respectively.
Data from TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) bulls steadily pushed the price of the top crypto higher throughout the day with BTC hitting a high of $17,501 in the afternoon, its highest price since Dec. 16.
Kitco senior technical analyst Jim Wyckoff noted the two-week high in Bitcoin in his morning BTC update and highlighted that “Bulls have gained some upside technical momentum recently and are working on a fledgling price uptrend on the daily bar chart.”
Wyckoff concluded that the gains seen this week “have also pushed just above key resistance at the 50-day moving average,” which many take as a bullish sign that market conditions are improving.
Insight into what to look for following today's breakout higher was provided by Eight Global founder Michaël van de Poppe, who posted the following tweet stressing the fact that Bitcoin needs to stay above $17,350 if it hopes to extend this rally.
Meanwhile, crypto analyst il Capo of Crypto posted the following message to help traders assess their main motivation for buying at these levels.
Capo followed up this tweet by noting that “there's not a single bullish confirmation yet,” and suggested that the bearish trend remains intact. “Bitcoin and most of the market are testing broken supports as resistances. We have seen this over and over. I'm not buying,” il Capo concluded.
Altcoins charge higher
The altcoin market also benefitted from the move higher in Bitcoin as the majority of tokens in the top 200 were in the green late on Tuesday afternoon.
The biggest gainers on the day were SingularityNET (AGIX), which spiked 34.4% to $0.0869, a 28.2% increase for Fetch.ai (FET), and a 16% gain for WOO network (WOO).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $860 billion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 39.1%.