How long will sideways trading and "boring" price action last for Bitcoin?

The world's largest cryptocurrency continues to languish below $42,000, far from its recent highs that saw the price approach its first control zone or resistance at $45,000. Similarly, the price is holding above its support just below $40,000, set by the January 10th lows. Bitcoin maintains a sideways movement between these two prices, giving no sign of a breakout in either direction. Wednesday's declines, amid a general pummeling of risk assets, left a low near $41,000, the worst change for Bitcoin in 10 days since it hit a floor at $39,800.

Investors are concerned about challenging macroeconomic conditions such as supply chain issues, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, rising inflation and falling tech markets, and risk assets such as cryptocurrencies are going to sell off or experience a bit of turmoil as the market adjusts to a different macro environment, analysts stated. "Bitcoin appears to have gotten lost in the noise of the last few weeks. It's not falling too hard despite risk assets getting pummelled but it's not recovering to any great extent either," commented Craig Erlam, analyst at Oanda.

Technical analysis confirms this "boring" price action, as some observers refer to it. The daily chart shows the broad price channel that it continues to trade in, between support at $39,500 and resistance at $45,500, in round figures, with low trading volumes. This explains the lack of price direction and trend. If buyers can get close to $43,000 and set above this price, there is a good chance of seeing a slight growth to last week's highs above $44,000 and, from there, they could make the jump to $45,000.

As for the rest of the market, the performance of most 'altcoins' mirrors that of the world's leading cryptocurrency, with total capitalization ranging from $1.97 trillion to $1.98 trillion. Ethereum is also encapsulated in a narrow range between $3,000 and $3,200. "ETH's daily trend is running through an ascending channel pattern. However, a downside break of this pattern could see a bearish cycle for Ethereum with the next immediate support at $2,730," noted Siddharth Menon, chief trading officer at WazirX.

The daily charts point out that as long as it trades above the $2,987 support, there is nothing to worry about even though selling volume has increased. A break below $3,000, would give bearish wings and the price could give way to $2,900 or $2,800.

Other tokens are also oscillating between red and green, with small rises for some of them, with the exception of LUNA, the digital unit of the Terra project, that is up 5%. As for Cardano (ADA), it continues to drain its gains of the last few days, to the point that it has almost corrected all the advance produced since January 11th and 12th, with rises that reached 40% and highs of up to $1.63. The token is trading below $1.40 and only a stabilization at this price could lead to a rebound above $1.50.