Bitcoin (BTC) fluctuated in its narrow trading range at the Wall Street open on September 29 as official data put the US economy into a recession.
BTC/USD 1-hour candlestick chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView
The United States meets the technical definition of recession
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed that BTC/USD is still hovering above $19,000 at the time of writing.
The pair escaped bleak numbers for the United States, where GDP growth in the second quarter was estimated at -0.6%. This, despite the White House’s protests to the contrary, means that the US has met the benchmark for a recession – two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Financial commentary resource The Kobeissi Letter responded, “Everyone talks about recessions as if they should never happen.”
“Any long-term healthy economy will experience many recessions. If you don’t have a recession, you just have a bubble. In this case, we just have a bubble and a recession. Fake markets don’t work.”
While analyzing the situation in Europe, Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), warned that a “deep” recession is about to hit the eurozone on the back of consumer confidence data.
“With the second quarterly review of negative GDP, […] the White House has stated that this is not the definition of a recession,” the popular Unusual Whales Twitter account continued about the confusion over what constitutes the recession that began earlier this year.
Instead, they advocate NBER, which is “a significant decline in economic activity spread throughout the economy that persists for more than a few months.”
The event comes after the Bank of England suddenly intervened in the UK bond market, returning to quantitative easing (QE) in a move reminiscent of the atmosphere when Bitcoin was born.
$19,000 looks unstable
However, Bitcoin price action has managed to avoid any major swings as the numbers flow, even with the monthly close just a day away.
Related: Bitcoin ‘Cool Detox’ Could Drop BTC Price Down to $12,000: Research
At the time of writing, BTC/USD was attempting to break the $19,000 support.
Noting that the -0.6% GDP result was better than the -0.9% forecast, there was little reason to celebrate the on-chain analytics resources.
Along with a screenshot of the BTC/USD order book on Binance, Material Indicators warned that the market bottom “does not exist.”
“The strong economic report means the Fed tightening has not had much if any impact so far. Translation: More aggressive rate hikes through the fourth quarter and into 2023,” he predicted in part in the accompanying comments.
BTC/USD (Binance) order book data chart. Source: Material Indicators / Twitter
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