Bitcoin price stuck below $29K as Terra LUNA comes back from the dead

BTC price action refuses to adopt a trend as Terra LUNA relaunches in a volatile altcoin market.
BTC price action refuses to adopt a trend as Terra LUNA relaunches in a volatile altcoin market.

Bitcoin (BTC) analysts faced another day of frustration on May 28 as BTC/USD refused to offer volatility up or down.

BTC/USD 1-day candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

"Not the decoupling we wanted"

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed the largest cryptocurrency sticking in a narrow short-term range into the weekend.

Previously forecast support levels to avoid a deeper correction managed to hold in the May 27 Wall Street trading session, but a bounce higher was similarly absent as commentators looked for fresh cues.

"Short resistance and long support until one of them breaks. Keep it simple in ranges as they are there to engineer liquidity for trend continuation or reversals," popular trading account Crypto Tony summarized in part of a recent tweet.

Others focused on Bitcoin's relative underperformance when compared with stocks, which finished up at the end of the week. The S&P 500 gained 2.47% on May 27, while the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 3.33%.

Unlike Bitcoin, equities markets were making the most of a continued downtrend in the strength of the U.S. dollar.

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) circled 101.6 on the day, down from highs of 105, which had marked a peak last seen in late 2002.

Analyst Matthew Hyland noted that the index's reversal meant that it was now challenging its overall uptrend from the beginning of the year.

Do Kwon confirms LUNA rebirth

On altcoins, the revival of the controversial Blockchain protocol Terra was greeted by limp performance.

Related: Exchanges back ‘Terra 2.0 revival plan’ via airdrops, listing, buyback and burning

Terra co-founder Do Kwon confirmed the launch of the new mainnet for in-house token LUNA on the day.

At the same time, concern was mounting over other major altcoin projects, notably Celsius (CEL), which had managed to drop from $0.80 to around $0.50 in under a week.

CEL/USD 1-hour candle chart (FTX). Source: TradingView

Hex (HEX), a project which had aroused suspicion throughout its existence, suffered a similar fate, declining from just over $0.11 a week ago to lows of under $0.05.

The top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap nonetheless copied Bitcoin's low-volatility behavior in the 24 hours to the time of writing, with only Dogecoin (DOGE) seeing noticeable moves, this time to the upside to reclaim $0.08.

DOGE/USD 1-hour candle chart (Binance). Source: TradingView

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