The last seven days haven’t been all that kind to Bitcoin (BTC) or the cryptocurrencies. After peaking around 17000, it’s been a steady decline back to the 13000 level.

The news of last week was very much focused on South Korea shutting down exchanges and banning trading. Cryptocurrencies have been extremely popular in South Korea. However, the Government is doing everything they can to curb what they consider to be ‘speculation’.

This has been weighing on the cryptos overall, however, as yet we haven’t been able to crack the key support level at 13000.

Support Holding Strong

After a near vertical market in December, where price shot up to levels just shy of 20000, we’ve now started to see the technicals come into play.

13000 has been holding up well and it is shaping as a key level. If we are able to crack support, then the next major support level looks to be 10000. That’s quite a substantial fall and represents nearly a 25% move to put it in context. As such, there is a lot of interest in whether BTC can hold up this week.

To the upside 15000 is shaping up as the first major resistance level, with 17000 the most recent swing high. Both have been held up on a number of occasions. Buying above 13000 seems a reasonable spot still as it has been news that has been pushing us lower. The only worry I see is that there is every chance that we could spike through 13000 and quickly retrace. That makes setting stops hard, from a technical perspective.

As you can see on the chart from Coinbase,  we’ve previously run through 13000 in what was a big move. For a short-term trade, we would have to look at a stop just below 12000. With targets below 15000 and potentially 17000.