In today’s morning trading, Bitcoin has finally ended its long, boring doldrums around the $6,400 mark – and it’s headed down, way down.
Over the last month, traders have watched the cryptocurrency float after a spike up to around $7,400 – by October 18, a price point of $6,800 represented what fortunetellers would have predicted as a month-long high – Bitcoin never regained that height again, settling in around $6,500 in the next few days and staying right about there, albeit a bit lower at the beginning of November, and then a bit higher again.
Right now, in a session with significant trading volume, Bitcoin is going lower, moving past $6,250 and giving short-term bulls some heartburn.
Analysts are saying the price is vulnerable to more drops: a piece at NewsBTC points out that there were “bearish moves” below $6,350 in the last three trading sessions, also referring to “bearish trend lines” with resistance at $6,360 and $6,340.
“An initial barrier for buyers is near the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $6,375 high to $6,239 low,” writes Aayush Jindal, looking at today’s session. “More importantly, there are two bearish trend lines formed with resistance at $6,300 and $6,340 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. Below the second trend line, the 100 hourly SMA is positioned at $6,325. Besides, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $6,375 high to $6,239 low is near $6,323. Therefore, if the price corrects higher from the current levels, it is likely to find a strong selling interest near $6,320 and $6,340.”
Elsewhere, analysts are looking at other negative indicators for cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin cash falling 9%, Ethereum burrowing deeper into its funnel in a downward pattern, and Ripple weathering some losses. As for BCH, at least some of the negativity may have to do with a hard fork that’s pretty contentious.
“There is a huge divide between the two camps trying to influence their own versions among investors,” wrote Bhushan Akolhar yesterday at Coinspeaker. Bitcoin Cash ABC nodes are 600% more than Bitcoin SV nodes. Also, Bitcoin Cash ABC has support from three major exchanges: Binance, BitPay, and Coinbase. On the other hand, Bitcoin SV enjoys the support of Coingeek, the largest Bitcoin Cash mining pool.
Then there’s the greater context:
“A large-scale selloff action has erased over $8 billion off the crypto market,” writes Davit Babayan. “The total market capitalization is $205 billion at the press time, down from $213 billion from yesterday. The market has a record of recovering from anywhere near $186 billion, which could be called the crypto bottom level of this year. The monthly perspective also shows a stable recovery from circa $200 billion, according to data available at CoinMarketCap.com.”
To many traders, it’s the Bitcoin price that’s most interesting, because we’ve been waiting so long for movement either way. This is a day that some day traders will be glued to the screen looking at where Bitcoin goes in the short term as others maintain buy-and-hold plays, or buy on the dip.