The negative sentiment for the short term continued over the weekend and spilled over onto Monday as Bitcoin bears dominated the market, to ensure Bitcoin price slipped momentarily below the psychological USD 10,000 line.
It had started rather hopefully 24 hours ago, when Bitcoin was trading at USD 10,600 (10:30 am UTC) on Sunday, and then registered a high of USD 10,817 just an hour later. However, as soon as Monday morning greeted the Far East markets, it was the bears who took hold of the bulls firmly by the horns, as intense selling pressure pushed prices down quickly from USD 10,690 to breach the all-important USD 10,000 floor and record a low of USD 9,872 — all within the space of four short hours.
This intense dipping action, however, was only successful in creating that breach twice, and immediate reentries brought price right back up above the five-digit mark as bulls also ensured that they were not completely invisible. It was as if they wanted to declare their intentions that they would not give up such an important milestone so easily, nor for so long.
Price trajectories have not been very certain since then, although spurts of buying interest creating hourly peaks in the daily charts do show that there are plenty of speculators who continue to see these price levels as very attractive buy-in zones and entrance points for Bitcoin. Nevertheless, the fact that it is in a fifth consecutive day of losses and a 4.45% decline from yesterday, does not mean that a bearish pattern is beginning to take hold for the short term view.
All in all, Monday does present a mood dampener for the bulls as they now have to consider their position in a Bitcoin total market capitalization of USD 184.5 billion as the entire market shudders to a standstill at USD 280 billion (CoinDesk).
Altcoin markets have yet to find any recourse after the demoralizing week past either, as Bitcoin dominance crept back up to 65.7% right now (CoinMarketCap). Ethereum led the losers, touching USD 203 briefly today, to register a price low not seen since May 15, while Litecoin finally gave up its hold on territory above USD 100, trading now in the high USD 80s.
Analysts are, as usual, struggling to make sense of this current retracement, that does not yet seem to be on its last legs. Michael Casey of CoinDesk does make the case we have last week as well, that Trump’s Tweet against crypto should not have held any substance, nor should it have been of any surprise. People do seem to be ignoring the fact that the very mention of crypto by a leader of one of the world’s most powerful countries is a huge endorsement of Bitcoin — if you believe that mere acknowledgement is itself endorsement.
Economist and Bitcoin trader Alex Krüger also points out that, even if Trump would go all the way and put an outright ban on Bitcoin, he could, presumably through an Executive Order, but it wouldn’t anyway be allowed by existing legislation. Trump might be able to isolate Bitcoin, attempting to make it more illiquid by closing of entry and exit points for investors. Krüger explained:
“Trump could also go after fiat onramps, by simply forbidding banks to service crypto exchanges, or by requiring banks to not service exchanges unless conditions XYZ are fulfilled (and make that practically impossible).”
But without the support of Congress, lawmakers could easily overturn his wishes, even those made via emergency actions such as executive orders, as he seems liable to do.
1/ Could Trump ban Bitcoin?
Thread ? pic.twitter.com/KeDI35GU7C
— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) July 15, 2019
Fundamentally speaking, Bitcoin continues to grow at an unabated pace, with the transactional volume picking up and the percentage of real use (other than trading) growing against record setting highs for hash power securing the network. Not everyone agrees, however. American crypto fund manager Timothy Peterson says that account figures for Bitcoin is overvalued, and that this price level actually is more realistic in accordance with user numbers and other user statistics such as transactional volume.
I hate short term price predictions but fundamentals tell me #bitcoin should be at about $8k right now. pic.twitter.com/z8PIU8mCdb
— Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) July 14, 2019
He even believes that USD 8,000 is the correct value based on active account values that are just shy of 850,000 in a 30-day median. But the good news about this is that, if Bitcoin fundamentals do grow according to project rate, then USD 10,000 does seem to be correct value not too far into the future, possibly even this year, if growth continues in this manner.
Some bulls do demonstrate views concurring with that of Peterson, albeit with less scientific methods, such as one ArminVanBitcoin:
https://twitter.com/ArminVanBitcoin/status/1149791185814347776
John McAfee, crypto influencer and self-exiled US Presidential hopeful, has reaffirmed his incredible prediction of USD 1 million Bitcoin by 2020, proving that short term price action doesn’t deter a full-time Bitcoin bull. McAfee claims to have been “laughing his f—— ass off” at the negativity, and fully backed Bitcoin to make it as he predicted.
Bitcoin is at the mid 10's and people worry. LMFAO!! Why do you pay attention to weekly fluctuations? Look at the past few months FFS! It's rising drastically. I'm still positive about my $1 mil BTC price by the end of 2020. Alt coins like MTC and Apollo will rise ten times more.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 14, 2019
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