Bitcoin Stable in Face of China Restrictions

Bitcoin prices remained stable in the face of more China restrictions and even rose a bit in the previous seven day period. Litecoin on the other hand is down slightly by 1.6 percent.

Bitcoin Stable in Face of More China Restrictions

Bitcoin is trading at $902 right now, $37 dollars above it’s last Tuesday price. In percentage terms this is a gain of 4.3 percent.

The rise happened despite more Chinese restrictions. First the three major bitcoin exchanges in China stopped margin lending, under instruction from authorities. Then they implemented a new trading fee model. All three will now have a trade fee of 0.2%, compared to 0% earlier. While the excuse given by the exchanges is ”to curb speculation and prevent volatility”, a more likely reason if the loss of their income from margin lending.

So far the additional negative news hasn’t led to more bitcoin losses. In fact prices rose a bit this week and managed to technically end the short-term downtrend that started two weeks ago. Still, while the technicals are neutral here, fundamentals look bleak. A bit more longer-term, bitcoin regulation in China could be coming, as several news articles have speculated. This coupled with the loss of margin trading in China and the newly introduced fees could dampen interest in the fledgling crypto-currency.

A new downtrend requires a break below the this month’s low at $748 dollars. Like we said last week, slightly below here we find a large support area , between $730 and $750 dollars. A clean break of this area could lead to more losses. The threshold to a new uptrend is set at the multi-year high of $1,096.

Litecoin Down by 1.6 Percent

Despite bitcoin’s gains, LTC/USD is trading down by 6 cents or 1.6 percent compared to last Tuesday. We are still in undecided territory here.

There’s weak support at the 15-day low of $3.74 but a new downtrend requires a break of the $3.40 swing low. There are several support levels below here at the $3.36, $3.31 and $3.22 swing lows. A clearing of this support area may be needed to see extended losses.

On the upper end we have a cluster of resistance at $4.08, $4 and $3.95. But a new uptrend needs a breakout above $4.60 dollars. More resistance higher up can be found at the $5 round figure and last year’s high at $5.64 dollars.