- Bitcoin moved back above its January 1st 2025 price overnight, despite no clarity on the ongoing trade war.
- Economic scare this week with growth metrics in the US landing negative, a key data point in measuring recession risks.
- Altcoins to watch: ETH and JTO
Firstly, I’m sorry for the longer-than-usual update – but this is an important one. Stick with it!
The crypto market has continued to move higher following last week’s sentiment shift, as investors breathed a sigh of relief after Trump and his inner circle signalled that trade talks were progressing.
However, despite the optimistic remarks we are yet to see any solid details emerge on these closed-door negotiations.
So… really, has anything changed? That’s the million dollar question I believe the market is currently trying to price in.
We’ve seen some broader clarity emerging from recent macroeconomic data releases – specifically from US GDP figures, which came in below expectations. While the data technically signals a step closer to a potential recession, it could still turn out to be a borderline non-event – and I have a chart to support that view.
Let’s dive into it.
Growth scare
The gross domestic product (GDP) is a widely used global measure that assesses a country’s economic activity and health. It increases during periods of growth and drops to negative values when there is a contraction in activity across services and manufacturing. If you want to better understand GDP, check out our beginner-friendly Swyftx Learn course.
While there is no unified global definition of when a recession occurs, it is commonly attributed to consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Overnight, we saw the US economy contract by an annualised 0.3% in the first quarter, as companies felt the pinch from Donald Trump’s trade war.
Optimism
Okay, the numbers don’t sound great.
But, when we break them down there is some optimism emerging from all the doom and gloom. A steep rise in the measurements of new importing activity is allegedly partly to blame, representing a gross -4.83 point drop to the net figure. This has been attributed to the increasing demand for physical delivery of gold bullion in the US.
So what we can take away from Kathy Jones is that while trade activity might be to blame, other components like productivity and spending aren’t necessarily falling. Is the risk of a recession not that likely then?
Well, we can turn to another data source to try to answer that question.
Atlanta Fed GDPNow
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow tool is not an official forecast – it is best viewed as a running estimate of real GDP growth based on available economic data for the current measured quarter.
Remember that official GDP data in the US comes out nearly a month after the quarter ends.
So, in simple terms, GDPNow is a mathematical model that predicts where official GDP growth will eventually land.
The current estimation for growth by the end of Q2 2025 is 2.4%, meaning this modelling is forecasting growth using recent data points as they release throughout the months.
If recession scares start to drive headline risks and become a key factor in market sentiment, paying attention to these types of metrics will become increasingly important.
The way I see it, these fears may be overstated – but there’s a lot to play out over the next few weeks and months.
BTC
We have seen the best month of 2025 from Bitcoin, locking in a 14% gain for April. As we start to see more clarity on the macro front I think we are just starting to see things getting started for BTC.
At resistance | At these current prices, BTC is hitting against the area where prices fell sharply towards the end of February.
Structure shift | We have now successfully made higher highs relative to previous highs on the daily time frame. This is a good sign for higher prices.
Higher low next | While it is still possible to go higher, the next key move will be at some point seeing a higher low develop, that will solidify the uptrend.
Related: Anthony Scaramucci Predicts Crypto Will Power Elon Musk’s Future Super App
ETH
Macro range key level | Drawing a Fibonacci extension from the last low in June 2022 to the last high in December 2024, we are at a key level of 0.786.
Bulls’ time to shine | This is where I would want to see a real push from the bulls in the coming weeks to start making a higher high and then a subsequent higher low. This would build the basis for the next trend.
Make or break | Should we fail to get a new high above $2,200 USD in the coming weeks, there is every opportunity that we still go lower from here.
JTO
Dip bought up | As JTO broke the range lows of this ascending channel, we can see the market was happy to accumulate.
Decision point | Now we wait to see if those hands remain steady, and continue to see a grind higher towards the channel’s top.
Lettuce hands | Or we could have some flaky bulls. At these prices, selling pressure starts to rise, making it likely that another move lower is still to come.
Keep up to date.
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