Though consolidation periods can be painful, they allow us to evaluate the next leaders and laggards when a directional trend resumes.

We've written a fair amount about potential leaders in the last few weeks, but it may be time to increasingly shift the conversation and focus more on the laggards.

While most areas have bounced this week, the DeFi sector is stubbornly lagging:

No matter how many charts we analyze, the market ultimately gets the final word, not us.

We're simply here to position ourselves where the risk vs. reward is exponentially in our favor. Unfortunately for trend-followers, there's not a whole lot of opportunities floating around right now.

Until we get a move in either direction from this near-term range, longs are likely getting chopped up, and shorts probably aren't working either.

As we've mentioned repeatedly, 30k is the level to watch on the downside for Bitcoin, while 41,000 and eventually 48,000 is the upper level of this range.

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