Recap of the last 18 hours. Overnight: broke the $76.1k floor that capped every bounce last week, printed $72,728 low. EU midday: reclaimed $75.3k. US open: the retest of $76.1k came in soft. Sellers stacked under the level, no clean reclaim, BTC drifted back to $74.8k.
That resolves the midday question. Failed retest, not clean reclaim. $76.1k is now confirmed resistance, not noise.
What I am watching into tomorrow:
1) PCE inflation print drops US morning. That is the catalyst that moves real money, not the bounce-and-fade chop we watched all day. A cool print and the $76.1k wall gets tested with macro tailwind. A hot print and $72.5k gets retested with none.
2) Fear & Greed at 25 with BTC dominance at 60% tells me the pain is still in alts. ETH reclaimed $2k but barely. SOL is the only top-3 alt printing relative strength, mostly on fee revenue and on-chain activity rather than price.
3) The overnight compression range I am marking is $74k-$76k. Outside that pre-PCE means someone has new information. Inside means the market is waiting for the print.
The setup is binary, the catalyst is timed, the levels are well-defined. That is unusually clean for crypto. The move after PCE should be the cleanest read of the week, up or down.