It has been an exciting week for bitcoin. Prices topped out at $272.96 then fell over $16 dollars in a major retracement. Meanwhile little brother Litecoin failed to follow bitcoin and rally as well.

Litecoin Fails to Rally

Alternative cryptocurrency Litecoin didn’t follow big brother in the latest up-move. The advance by the bulls got rejected right in that $3.12-$3.18 resistance area marked on the chart below. Prices only traded as high as $3.1510 last week before being pushed back below the $3 dollars handle.

We have since gained back some of the lost ground with LTC/USD quoted at $3.0270 at the moment. But the bulls still have a lot of work ahead of them. The key resistance area is still near $3.18, starting with the former swing high at $3.1799 and another previous swing low at $3.1840. A decisive break above $3.19 may jump-start a new LTC rally.  On the other side of the fence, the hurdle to a new downtrend is set lower at $2.70 dollars per coin.

Bitcoin Retraces $16 Dollars From Highs

It has been a great week for Bitcoin bulls. Prices rallied by over $20 dollars once they broke the $250 handle to hit $272.96. But soon after hitting the $270 resistance level BTC/USD retraced a large $16 dollars from the highs reached on October 17th. We hit a low of $256.88 dollars before stabilizing somewhat. As we can see on the chart below, Sunday’s down move came after 5 straight days of gains for BTC. We have since gained back some lost ground with bitcoin quoted at $264.49 dollars per coin.

What’s next for big brother? To regain the lost bullish momentum BTC will need to decisively break the October 17th high at $273 dollars. Above here weak resistance can be found at $290 dollars but a much stronger level is at the round $300 dollars handle.

On the lower end a break below the $239 swing low may end the current BTC rally. But before that comes, the bears will need to take care of the round $250 figure. This was the starting point for the current bitcoin rally, as well as for the previous rally back in June AND for the move lower that followed. With bitcoin now back above the level, it should act as strong support to falling prices.

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