Bitcoin battles bears 'on offense' as Christmas delivers a $50K BTC gift

Bitcoin (BTC) held $50,000 into Dec. 25 as BTC bulls avoided an unwelcome Christmas Day surprise.

"Bears become bulls" short term?

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD maintaining $50,000 support into the weekend, having ranged after local highs above $51,500.

The pair was calm as the holiday season got underway, with thinner liquidity yet to show itself in the form of volatile price moves.

With most taking a break from trading and analysis, the nearest target to the upside remained the $1 trillion market cap valuation level at $53,000.

For popular trader Pentoshi, a point of friction could come in the form of sellers actively driving down BTC/USD to liquidity at $46,000, only to then buy back in for a rebound.

"Right now beras on offense. They take price down to 46k but there was a lot of resting liquidity there = stop price from moving. They begin to close shorts and buy some spot back," he offered as a forecast.

Further out, the yearly close was yet to form a major topic of interest, with Bitcoin nonetheless up $21,000 versus the start of 2021.

$100,000 halving cycle average not dead yet

Taking stock at the end of the year, meanwhile, was stock-to-flow model creator PlanB. 

Related: Missed out on hot crypto stocks in 2021? It paid just to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum, data shows

Having attracted fresh criticism over Twitter comments he says were misconstrued, the popular analyst said that Bitcoin was still abiding by his model's predictions this month.

As Cointelegraph reported, stock-to-flow's parameters provide significant room for maneuver when it comes to spot price, this nonetheless of value to PlanB and others.

Ad2 - S2F model intactKey is that BTC $51K is still within 1 standard deviation band of S2F model (roughly $50K-$200K, see chart). If BTC stays within 1sd band for the next 2.5 yrs, then S2F model is still valid and indeed useful for me. Of course you should make your own call. pic.twitter.com/cFpRdewUJ5

While $135,000 this month, a forecast from the newly invalidated floor model, turned out to be overly optimistic, that figure as an average price this halving cycle remains in play.