Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch – Sharp Selloff on South Korea Update

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights
 

• Bitcoin price broke below its short-term triangle consolidation and rising channel to pave the way for a larger pullback.

• The Fibonacci retracement tool shows the potential support levels where buyers could be waiting.

• Price might also be forming a larger ascending channel on its 4-hour time frame as indicators still support an uptrend.

Bitcoin price was unable to sustain the climb after previously consolidating, as a larger correction seems necessary.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is safely above the longer-term 200 SMA to indicate that the path of least resistance is to the upside. Although price already broke below the 100 SMA dynamic support to signal a pickup in bullish pressure, the gap between the moving averages is still wide enough to suggest that there’s no imminent threat of a bearish crossover.

Bitcoin price could move on to testing the 200 SMA dynamic inflection point next, and this lines up with the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at the $7,000 major psychological mark. A larger pullback could last until the very bottom of the freshly-forming ascending channel at $6,800, which lines up with a former resistance level.

RSI is heading lower to show that sellers are in control, but the oscillator is also dipping into oversold territory to signal exhaustion among sellers. Similarly stochastic is heading south so bitcoin price might follow suit, but it’s also approaching oversold levels to suggest a possible turnaround soon. In that case, the 38.2% Fib at the mid-channel area of interest might be enough to keep losses in check.

The recent slide is being pinned on news from South Korea as officials are looking into ending tax benefits for cryptocurrency exchanges. This has been prompted by rapidly increasing transaction volumes in the country, leading authorities to worry that a lot are being used for money-laundering and financing illegal activity.

Hong Seong-ki, head of the country’s cryptocurrency response team South Services Commission, said:

“While crypto markets have seen rapid growth, such trading platforms don’t seem to be well-enough prepared in terms of security. We’re trying to legislate the most urgent and important things first, aiming for money-laundering prevention and investor protection. The bill should be passed as soon as possible.”

SARAH JENN | AUGUST 1, 2018 | 4:12 AM

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

Crypto market overview – Bitcoin, Ethereum go down; Goldman predicts more pain

• All major cryptocurrencies lost positions in recent 24 hours.

• Goldman experts believe that the upside was temporary.

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Cryptocurrency market continued sliding from recent highs. All major coins finished Monday in a red zone, while the total cryptocurrency market value slipped to $290B against $296.9B this time on Monday. EOS proved to be the worst-perfomer out of top-10 (the coin has lost over 9%), while Bitcoin went down 2.5% .

Bitcoin, the digital currency No.1, is changing hands at $8,100, the coin has lost 0.7% in recent 24 hours and touched $7,850 during Monday trading

Ethereum, the second largest digital coin with current market value $45.8B, broke below critical $460 to trade at $452 at press time, down 2.5% on a daily basis. ETH touched $516 high on July 18 and lost nearly 10% since that time.

EOS is the worst performing cryptocurrency out of top-10. The coin has lost over 7% to trade at $7.65 amid a combination of a technical and fundamental factors. Thus a sustainable movement below $8.00 handle increased the bearish pressure and triggered new selling orders.

Meanwhile, institutional bankers came up with gloomy forecasts. Thus, Goldman Sachs experts believe that the recent upside of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies will be short-lived.

“We expect further declines in the future given our view that these cryptocurrencies do not fulfill any of the three traditional roles of a currency: they are neither a medium of exchange, nor a unit of measurement, nor a store of value,” Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani from bank’s Investment Strategy Group wrote.

Tanya Abrosimova Tanya Abrosimova

FXStreet

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

3 THINGS PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT BITCOIN, ACCORDING TO AN EARLY INVESTOR

Famous Bitcoin early investor Jeffrey Wernick — who also got into Uber and Airbnb as an angel investor — recently told Business Insider that people get a lot of things wrong about the first and foremost cryptocurrency. Here’s some of what he had to say.
 

When asked by Business Insider‘s Sara Silverstein what “most people get wrong about bitcoin or cryptocurrency,” the successful financial expert had a lot to say on the matter.
 

‘IT’S A PEOPLE’S MONEY’

Firstly, Wernick claims most people today have either neglected to recall or totally forgotten the philosophical purpose which underlined Bitcoin’s creation — namely, that it would be an alternative currency outside the reach of governments and traditional financial institutions. He explained:

People who have got into it now talk more about blockchain than bitcoin, because they’re just looking for an alternative model to make money and they don’t care about — they’re agnostic to the initial philosophical framework that drove people to adopt bitcoin to begin with and kept it alive from 2009 through 2013 or ’14, when all of a sudden, adoption started to grow. There was a small universe of people that actively worked to keep it alive by continuing to mine and continuing to buy and they were doing it because of the concept that they believed in, and that it’s a people’s money.

Indeed, one doesn’t have to look very far to see that every traditional financial institution under the sun is looking to utilize blockchain technology for their own purposes — none of which align with Bitcoin’s ethos.

IT ONLY FACES HEADWINDS’

And while the eyes of the market focus firmly on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s pending exchange-traded fund decisions, it might be worth examining what such derivatives have done to another ‘people’s money,’ silver. Also, is Bitcoin meant to be a speculative investment or a currency that undermines an unfair and unjust global financial system, which itself aims to destroy Bitcoin?
 

Wernick explained:

Since bitcoin has been created in 2009, it’s outperformed every currency, even with governments hostile to it, and a regulatory regime that’s an uncertain regime and the governments have been designing, have been managing it in a way so people cannot know what to expect. So it’s amazing the valuation it has today given the fact that it only faces, it only faces headwinds, no tailwinds. Every government throughout the world is trying to figure out how to stop and kill bitcoin.
 

THE ‘ONLY ANSWER’

Investing in Bitcoin, according to Wernick, should be seen as a form of protest against the government and its financial policies — and it’ll probably be a profitable investment at that. He explained:
 

I think over five years, you’re going to accumulate a lot more wealth than you would in any other alternative investment, but again, you don’t want to buy more than you can afford to lose, because I could be wrong, and you’d be making a statement to the government that says, “What you’re doing is completely unacceptable.” Because if you think about how the financial system works, the financial system punishes the saver and benefits the borrower, but only benefits a small classification of borrowers.

Then the question is, is what, what for a typical middle class person — how do they accumulate wealth? And I think their only answer is to put a certain percentage in crypto.
 

ADAM JAMES · @SHASDAM | JUL 27, 2018 | 20:00

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

‘Any number of catalysts could send bitcoin exploding higher,' says blockchain venture capitalist

• Bitcoin trading at about $8,200 as of the earlier hours of Thursday.

• Blockchain venture capitalist Spencer Bogart says many things could cause the coin to gain value — or fall — rapidly.

• "Bitcoin is kind of a tinderbox right now, waiting for reasons to go higher," he says.

Bitcoin has seen strong gains over the last week — trading at about $8,200 as of the earlier hours of Thursday.

But the largest digital currency by market cap still isn't close to its December, 2017 high of $19,783.21. Now, market watchers are waiting in anticipation for the next jump — or decline.

"Any number of catalysts could send bitcoin exploding higher," Spencer Bogart, a partner at Blockchain Capital, told CNBC on "Fast Money" Wednesday.

Those catalysts include global trade tensions, the possibility of a bitcoin ETF, rising currency rates and Mastercard's recent announcement of a new patent that could allow bitcoin transactions on credit cards.

"Bitcoin is kind of a tinderbox right now, waiting for reasons to go higher," said the venture capitalist.

In May, even as bitcoin continued to fall, Bogart said it was the only digital coin worth buying, as more banks and large institutions were beginning to accept the coin, and urged long-term investors to get on board.

Other cryptocurrencies, he said, were "over-promising and under-delivering. Meanwhile you have a few that are kind of excelling at their use cases. Bitcoin being one of them." He said bitcoin, which was priced around $7,400 at the time, would likely go lower before hitting at least $10,000 by the end of 2018. The coin fell below $6,000 the following month.

On Wednesday, Bogart said bitcoin may have hit its bottom for the year, but that he was "definitely expecting to see new highs" and told investors to expect more regulatory approval of the space in the coming year.

"The cat’s already out of the bag," Bogart said, adding that "innovation is going elsewhere if the SEC doesn’t get on board soon."

Author Kellie Ell |

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Analysis: Range-Bound Action?

Bitcoin is consolidating at the middle of its range in what seems to be a continuation signal.

BITCOIN PRICE ANALYSIS

Bitcoin has found support at the $5,800 handle and resistance at $6,800 but is currently sitting right at the middle. Price seems to be stuck in a bearish flag, which is often considered a continuation signal.

In that case, bitcoin could tumble back to the bottom of its range to test support before buyers return. The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA after all, so the path of least resistance might be to the downside. In addition, both moving averages appear to have held as dynamic resistance levels.

However, the gap between the moving averages has narrowed to signal weakening bearish pressure and a potential upward crossover. In that case, bullish momentum could return and push bitcoin price back to the resistance.

Pic

In that case, the inverse head and shoulders could be completed and a break past the range resistance or neckline could spur an even longer-term rally.

RSI reached oversold levels and has started to pull up, also hinting at a return in bullish momentum. Stochastic just made its way to oversold territory and has yet to turn higher.

Bitcoin is on the back foot once more, erasing almost half the gains posted in the previous week on negative commentary and overall risk aversion. Trade tensions are worsening, boosting demand for the safe-haven dollar even as retaliatory measures could hurt its economy.

Hawkish commentary from Fed official Evans also helped shore up demand for the dollar as he expressed support for two more hikes this year, after previously dissenting the December 2017 hike. This also supported investor confidence that the US economy can weather any uncertainties from trade troubles as Evans acknowledged the strong support from fiscal policy.

Traders are now holding out for further catalysts, whether it be more negative remarks that push it back down or positive developments in the industry.

By Rachel Lee On Jul 12, 2018

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden