Bitcoin battles whales above $22K as BTC price faces US CPI data

Bitcoin (BTC) continued to battle major resistance on Sep. 13 as markets prepared for United States inflation numbers.

"Serious" whales present new BTC price hurdl

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked BTC/USD as it sought to push through $22,500.

Bulls had attempted to vanquish a wall of seller interest in the range just above $22,000, this proving especially stubborn and leading to an overnight consolidation phase.

On-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators highlighted the struggle in a screenshot of the Binance BTC/USD order book the day prior.

Let's see if they are hungry enough to snack on $13M in #BTC ask liquidity.#FireCharts pic.twitter.com/GY3giu7Mh8

— Material Indicators (@MI_Algos) September 12, 2022

For fellow analytics platform Whalemap, meanwhile, it was no wonder that the current range was a sticking point for bulls.

“The new area to keep an eye on: $22,780 - $23,400,” the Whalemap team told Twitter followers.

“This one is serious BUT is the last one inside our current 19k - 25k range.”

An accompanying chart showed the extent to which large-volume wallets had accumulated at various levels in the past. Resistance near spot price was thus all but guaranteed.

As Cointelegraph reported, these clusters of whale activity had effectively sealed the most recent BTC price bottom.

Further analyzing the situation, popular trader Crypto Ed remained confident that a price correction should now enter, but noted that spot buyer interest nonetheless remained.

#BTC a correction down would absolutely make sense (small CME gap), but check how spot keeps buying this (white indicator). pic.twitter.com/XbXATe8W8I

— Ed_NL (@Crypto_Ed_NL) September 13, 2022

In a previous update, Crypto Ed had given a potential downside target of $20,800.

CPI showdown due in hours

For Michaël van de Poppe, CEO and founder of trading firm Eight, the day was still all about the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) print for August.

Related: The Fed, the Merge and $22K BTC — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week

Poised to confirm the ongoing trend of declining inflation, CPI promised volatility across risk assets around the reveal date, slated for 8.30 am Eastern time.

“Today is the big day on CPI. Expectations are that month-over-month will be -0.1% and year-over-year 8.1%,” Van de Poppe explained.

“If it's going to be higher than those numbers, probably we'll be seeing a heavy reaction negatively on risk-on. If it's lower -> positive reaction. Simple.”

The U.S. dollar index (DXY), a key driver of risk asset downside, steadied its fall from recent days, attempting to preserve 108 as support.

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