Bitcoin hits a wall at $28,000 after bank-turmoil rally fizzles

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bitcoin’s rally this year has caught a lot of attention. Yet the coin has seemingly stopped its advance at $28,000, a key trading point around which it’s been meandering in recent days. The largest cryptocurrency has hit a proverbial wall at that level, moving slightly above or below it in what analysts are calling range-bound trading. For the last three weeks of trading, Bitcoin has been trading within 15% of a key trendline — its average price over the past 30 days. Bitcoin was little changed at around $28,280 as of 4:25 p.m. in New York. “It’s chopping around that level right now,” Alex Coffey, TD Ameritrade senior trading strategist, said in an interview. “It’s sort of just drifting.” Bitcoin, in the wake of the fallout of a handful of US lenders last month, staged a rally that brought it from around $20,000 to $28,000 in a matter of days. As reasons for its surge, investors resurfaced longtime narratives — that the coin is a hedge against inflation and can be a safe haven amid turmoil at traditional banking institutions. The uptick — along with a broader year-to-date surge — helped it score the top spot among major assets in terms of performance in the first quarter.

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Chart But the fact that the coin’s advance has stalled out is no surprise to Aya Kantorovich, former head of institutional coverage at FalconX. Bitcoin faithfuls drove the upward price action in March, but fundamentally, little has