Crypto Industry News:
Finland-based P2P cryptocurrency platform LocalBitcoins is shutting down after more than 10 years.
The company officially announced the discontinuation of services on February 9, citing the difficult market conditions of the ongoing cryptocurrency winter.
"Regardless of our efforts to address the challenges of restoring trading volume and declining market share, we have come to the regret that LocalBitcoins can no longer provide a Bitcoin trading service," said LocalBitcoins CEO Nikolaus Kangas.
LocalBitcoins encouraged all customers to withdraw their assets from the platform, requesting continued Bitcoin withdrawals from the LocalBitcoins wallet. According to the announcement, users can withdraw cryptocurrencies for 12 months.
As scheduled, LocalBitcoins will immediately suspend all new registrations from today. Trading will be suspended on February 16, and after that, users will only be able to log into the wallet to withdraw funds.
Technical Market Outlook:
The BTC/USD pair key short-term technical support located at $22,523 and $22,308 had been violated and the bears made a new local low at the level of $21,488. On the lower time frames, like H4, the momentum is still weak and negative, but bulls are tying to bounce towards the level of $22,328. The market trades below the short-term trend line resistance and below 50 and 100 MA. . A breakout above the level of $25,000 on BTC/USD is still needed in order to extend the rally towards the key mid-term technical resistance seen at $25,442, so there is still a room to the upside for bulls.
Weekly Pivot Points:
WR3 - $22,270
WR2 - $22,017
WR1 - $21,928
Weekly Pivot - $21,765
WS1 - $22,675
WS2 - $21,510
WS3 - $21,322
Trading Outlook:
Despite the recent rally, the down trend on the H4, Daily and Weekly time frames continues without any indication of a possible trend termination or reversal. So far every bounce and attempt to rally is being used to sell Bitcoin for a better price by the market participants, so the bearish pressure is still high. The gamechanging level for bulls is located at $25,442 and it must be clearly violated for a valid breakout in the longer term.
