Both Bitcoin and Litecoin and trading slightly down since our last update. Bitcoin is down from $286 to 279.50, a fall of 2.7 percent. Meanwhile its little brother recorded a larger loss from $4.93 last Tuesday to $4.33 today, for a total of 12.2 percent.

Bitcoin Nears $270 Dollars

Bitcoin traded as low as $275 dollars in the past seven days. This comes after the week before the crypto hovered near this important mark for several days.

This level remains to be key to the current bitcoin rally. A clean break below, by taking out $265 dollars, would end the uptrend. Note that while the trend is still technically in place, the momentum higher has been lost long time ago. To regain it, the bulls will need to break above the yearly high at $318 dollars. In fact, starting from the July 12th high at $310.22 to the year’s high at $318.10 we find a large resistance area. A breakout above this area should lead to more gains.

Along with the range-bound trading, volatility has plummeted. The 14-day ATR, a popular measure of volatility, is down from $15.50 dollars on July 17th to only $6.50 dollars today. We excluded the July 18th spike because it happened on low liquidity and it’s not an accurate representation of volatility. The crash on that day didn’t replicate on other trading exchanges.

Litecoin Down 12 Percent

Litecoin continues to trade in a range, albeit a very large range. Since last Tuesday, LTC/USD traded as low as $3.85 and as high as $5.06. We are currently quoted at $4.33, down over 12 percent in a week.

This altcoin is locked inside a large $2 dollars range, roughly between $3 and $5 dollars per coin. On the lower end, the support area stretches from $3.00 to $3.18 dollars. On the higher end the resistance area is from the July 28th swing high at $5.06 to the July 12th high at $5.2973. We will need to see a clean breakout above $5.30 or below $3 dollars to jump-start a new uptrend/downtrend. Caution should be exercised on the upper side due to the recent LTC crash from $8.64 dollars per coin to a low of $3.18. Unless Litecoin gets a helping hand from big brother bitcoin, it will be hard to make a lot of progress beyond $5.30 dollars.

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