Market Cap: $268,589,999,423 | 24h Vol: $71,260,212,912 | BTC Dominance: 63.8%

Bitcoin (BTC) remained trapped within an increasingly narrow price range last week, as volatility surrounding the pioneer cryptocurrency continued to decline.

The BTC/USD pair consolidated around the $9,000 level as bears were unable to breach the June 27th trading low, around the $8,800 support level.

Bitcoin performed its first negative monthly price close since March, as the BTC/USD pair ended the month slightly below the June opening price.

Bulls were able to close a price gap on the BTC CME futures chart, around the $9,250 area, however, they failed to maintain price above the gap for long.

The trading ranges surrounding Bitcoin started to become increasingly narrow, as BTC volatility dropped to its lowest level in over a year. Retail traders still remained optimistic towards the price of Bitcoin rising, despite the lack of volatility and tight trading ranges.

Data showed that over 80% of margin retail traders on the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex were still long BTC/USD.

Despite the low volatility surrounding the number one cryptocurrency, BTC on-chain activity remained impressive. A number of key on-chain metrics hit a multi-year high last week.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty posted its smallest percentage change since March 2010 last week. Analysts speculated this may be due to low volatility and the delay of equipment being delivered to bitcoin miners.

Data from analytics platform Skew.com continued to show that BTC open interest remained at healthy levels, despite the drop in futures trading volume last month.

Data from Skew.com also showed that the correlation between the price of Bitcoin and the S&P 500 was starting to rise.

The total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market broke its three-week losing streak last week, as the altcoin staged a minor upside recovery.

Aside from a strong rally in the price of Cardano, most of the trading action happened outside of the top-10. Kyber Network posted impressive gains, while Compound suffered an extremely volatile trading week.

The Week Ahead

Looking at the week ahead, Bitcoin’s ability to bounce back everytime the $9,000 level is breached is very impressive. It certainly hints that large institutions and whales are accumulating BTC.

In order to increase technical buying, bulls need to move price back above Bitcoin’s 50-day moving average, around the $9,400 level.

The next step for BTC bulls would be to initiate a multi-day price close above the $9,800 level. If these two steps can take place, it would provide a powerful buy signal for technical traders.

Traditional financial markets have been increasingly focusing on risk-on and risk-off trading sentiment over the last few months. At the moment, risk-on trading sentiment is helping to drive global equity markets higher. Bitcoin may benefit this week, if positive risk sentiment remains in place.

The United States economic calendar is fairly light on top-tier economic data this week, with the ISM non manufacturing report headlining. Other data releases from the U.S. economy include services PMI, manufacturing PMI, weekly jobs, and inflation data.

The current technicals show that bulls need to create bullish higher high and lower lows to continue to attract short-term buying interest.

Bitcoin (BTC) will be looking in good shape technically if bulls can penetrate past the technical resistance cluster between the $9,300 to $9,500 area.

Once above the $9,800 resistance level, the $10,500 and $11,000 levels become very achievable upside targets.

Ethereum (ETH) is starting to look more bullish after sellers repeatedly failed to hold price below the technically important $217.00 level last week.

Bulls need to stabilize price above the $240.00 level to encourage technical buying, and force a breakout above the $250.00 level.

If this scenario occurs then the ETH/USD pair quickly rallying towards the $290.00 to $300.00 resistance zone.