The flash crash in bitcoin over the weekend set up a tense day of trading on Monday but the bulls steadied the ship. BTC briefly retested $47000 but found its legs late Monday and has continued to grind higher, hitting $50,800.

On the technical side, not much stands in the way to a return to $54,000. That's the November low and the 100-day moving average and will be a key hurdle.

bitcoin daily Dec 7
BTC daily

The most-recent big fall in bitcoin came in September when it hit $53K and then promptly cratered to $43K in a number of hours. From there, it steadied for two weeks around 48K before falling all the way to $40K.

Bitcoin in Sept

Sharp drops in April and February were also followed by further selling. All that is good evidence that it takes some time to repair the psyche of bitcoin bulls after the kind of pain we saw on Saturday.