crypto Archives - Page 178 of 187

31st May 2021

Five Signs That The Bitcoin Bottom Is In

Bitcoin price was slashed in half during the month of May, leaving today as the last day for bulls to make a stand and undo the worst monthly on record.

Even if the blood stain is left behind on the price chart for good, that doesn’t mean bulls still can’t pull off an upset and push prices higher. Here are five signs that Bitcoin price has bottomed out, or will be soon.

The Signals Showing The Bitcoin Bottom Is Near

Just as extreme bullish sentiment and exuberance around mid-April was the local top of the 2021 rally so far, the current level could also act as the bottom now that sentiment has shift to the polar opposite.

A hidden bull div has formed on daily support | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Contrarian investors and traders suggest buying the fear or blood in the streets, but that’s still not the reason to think the bottom is in.

Related Reading | Building The Case That The Bitcoin Bottom Is In

Rather, technicals on nearly all timeframes point to a reversal in the making. The first ever cryptocurrency is forming a bullish divergence (above) while at daily support. The bounce happened once the Relative Strength Index hit oversold levels.

The logarithmic MACD shows momentum is turning upward | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The daily LMACD is also turning upward, showing that bulls are attempting to regain momentum on daily timeframes after a month of mayhem.

Moving up to a higher timeframe, Bitcoin price has also bounced at a rising trendline of RSI support on the three-day chart (below).

Bitcoin bounced off a high timeframe RSI support trend line | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

But Wait, There’s More Reasons To Be Bullish On BTC

If that’s not enough to believe there’s a low-timeframe reversal in the making, on higher timeframes there’s still many more reasons to be bullish.

Related Reading | Don’t Have A Cow: Bart Simpson Is Back In Bitcoin

The rarely-looked-at two-week timeframe shows that Bitcoin fell to the middle-SMA on the Bollinger Bands. During the last bull market, the line was never lost. In fact, touching it resulted in the finally impulse upward.

The two-week middle-BB was retested only once during the last bull run | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The recent push down also caused Bitcoin’s most profitable buy signal to indicate “capitulation” in BTC miners. Past bull markets saw more than 8,000% and 3,500% after the last buy signal appeared per cycle.

The most profitable buy signal in crypto is about to trigger | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Nearly every time the signal appears, more upside is on the way. So why would this time be any different?

With so many signals stacking up, chances that the cryptocurrency is near the bottom are becoming more likely. Drawdowns post buy signal are still common, however, the potential reward has historically always outweighed the risk in terms of ROI versus loss.

Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com

29th May 2021

VORTECS Report: How volatility drove one crypto trading strategy to 280x Bitcoin’s gains

While Bitcoin hodlers are seeing 2021’s gains slowly diminish, one consistent crypto trading strategy has delivered over 3,000% since Jan 3 — and BTC isn’t in the portfolio.

28th May 2021

Don’t Have A Cow: Bart Simpson Is Back In Bitcoin

The crypto market is in fierce debate: is the top of the Bitcoin bull market in? Bears salivating for cheaper coins say yes, while bulls hell bent on seeing through stock-to-flow predictions say otherwise. But which is it?

A secondary conflict surrounds the topic: “if that was a top, it sure doesn’t look like one.” And while that is indeed true, don’t have a cow, man. We’re about to explain why the most recent top ushered in the return of Bart Simpson, along with why the move likely happened the way it did.

“If This Is The Top In Bitcoin, It Doesn’t Look Like A Top”

Even if you aren’t a pro at technical analysis and couldn’t read a chart if your life depended on it, it is pretty clear that tops and bottoms come to a sharp point most of the time – signaling a rebound is ahead and the violence left behind.

Rounded bottoms do commonly appear but are a slow grind of a process and tend to stretch across a long timeframe.

The shape and pattern of the recent Bitcoin “top” has many traders and analysts confused. Where is the blow-off phase? Where is the bearish retest? What type of pattern even is this? All of these questions are used as firepower to make an argument that this isn’t a top.

The spiky pattern with several sharp peaks into resistance instead looks like the top of the head of a famous cartoon character: Bart Simpson.

Bitcoin bart simpson the simpsons

Bart moves are back in BTC | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com via Twitter

I’m Bart Simpson, Who The Hell Are You?

The character Bartholomew JoJo Simpson, or Bart for short, first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 as a short. A dedicated show first aired in 1989 and it has been running ever since.

The animated character is a TV icon, and the show is a pop culture phenomenon that’s adored by millions. So why then, when Bart appears on the Bitcoin price chart do crypto traders get so upset?

“Bart moves” as the community calls them, result from low liquidity. During such phases, whales can easily push price action through trading ranges. Bitcoin at more than a trillion dollar market cap tames the overall liquidity argument, but when order books are thin because everyone is holding, a whale can just as easily make waves as we’ve recently seen.

This high timeframe Bart move is the largest on record, and shows that more coins being exchanged are necessary to further price appreciation. Order books should be stacked for further upside. For now, the cryptocurrency is back to being a whale’s playground – either until buying or selling picks up to an extreme.

Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com

28th May 2021

UC Berkeley To Auction Nobel Prize-Winning Inventions As NFTs

NFTs have been a pillar around a variety of upcoming projects and firms. From music, to fashion, to sports – and beyond – NFTs have been a hot topic. Now, the University of California Berkeley is looking to fund research by way of two NFTs at the heart of “biomedical breakthroughs”.

Magnificent Minting

In an announcement on the UC Berkeley website today, the university shared that two Nobel-Prize winning inventions will be up for bidding. The NFTs will consist of internal forms and correspondence centered around research that led to two groundbreaking biomedical advances.

One of the two NFTs, titled ‘The Fourth Pillar’, has been minted on Foundation and will be listed in a 24-hour auction as early as Wednesday, June 2nd. The NFT represents an invention around cancer immunotherapy developed by UC Berkeley’s Jim Allison. Allison’s discovery shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The name is driven from immunotherapy becoming the ‘fourth pillar’ of cancer therapy, alongside surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

The second NFT, yet to be minted, will recognize UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna for her 2020 Nobel in Chemistry, centered around CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. The informational release has noted that the university will continue to hold the relevant patents surrounding the research.

Foundation.app is an Ethereum-powered NFT marketplace. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

Blockchain At Berkeley

The proceeds from the Foundation auction will go towards funding innovation research and education, with a portion going specifically to UC Berkeley’s blockchain innovation hub and student group, ‘Blockchain at Berkeley’. The university has also engaged in blockchain through other means, such as the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator, a blockchain-focused curriculum and partnership with industry executives.

The university’s chief innovation & entrepreneurship officer Rich Lyons said that the release “represents something magnificent”. Lyons added that “there are people who recognize and care about symbols of great science, and even if they never intend to resell the NFT, they want to own it and they want resources to go back to Berkeley, where the basic research behind these Nobel Prizes came from, to support further research”.

The university will also take a portion of the proceeds and allocate them towards carbon offsets to eliminate the energy costs of minting the NFT.

It’s uncharted territory for the university here, as no precedent has been set on an NFT like this. However, to Lyons and the Berkeley team, there seems to be a bit of allure in that sense; “people give us donations all the time because they care about the institution and the science, so here is a way for somebody to invest in the institution in a slightly different way”, Lyons said.

27th May 2021

Big tech, not cryptocurrency, is the real threat to central banks’ autonomy, Danish central bank governor says

Though Danmarks Nationalbank’s governor seems tempted to ignore cryptocurrencies, other banks in the country continue to launch new services based on crypto.

26th May 2021

Polygon (MATIC) Releasing Development Kit For Ethereum-Connected Chains

Safe to say, Polygon has been on a tear lately. On the heels of a DappRadar report noting more than 75,000 active users and nearly $1B in value flows through their layer 2 protocol, the Polygon team has announced a new developer SDK for streamlined app creation. In the past month, our team at NewsBTC anticipated continued success for MATIC, and now the protocol is unleashing more developer-friendly materials.

Polygon’s SDK

Polygon-tracked apps continue to grow with regards to DeFi and Exchange-related categories. Today’s announcement will allow developers to continue that growth. Polygon announced that they will be launching a new software development kit (or SDK) for developers to unleash their own Ethereum-connected blockchains. The SDK will include a number of different plug-and-play modules and the team has stated it was designed to reflect a “Polkadot on Ethereum” approach.

The SDK is set to include modules like consensus, synchronization, TxPool, JSON RPC and gRPC. An initial version of the SDK will allow developers to create standalone chains with complete interoperability with Ethereum; a following version of the kit will enable dev teams to create layer 2 protocols directly connected to Ethereum mainnet.

The Perspective

Compatibility with Ethereum as the protocol optimizes is clearly top of mind for the Polygon team. While scalability for Ethereum is a major talking point, Polygon is at the forefront of the conversation in terms of protocols addressing scalability concerns, while still looking to implement interoperability. In a statement surrounding the SDK’s release, co-founder Sandeep Nailwal noted that “with advanced ‘layer 2’ solutions, Ethereum 2.0 all coming online now or soon, the need for a comprehensive interoperability framework is stronger than ever. With the Polygon SDK, we are solving pressing needs for Ethereum’s multi-chain future, including ease of deployment and inter-L2 communication”.

$MATIC has seen a strong recovery after the recent market-wide slide | Source: MATIC-USD on TradingView.com

Looking Forward

As DeFi continues a high-flying emergence, Polygon looks to continue to be on the forefront. The protocol emphasizes lower gas fees relative to Ethereum, and fast transaction speeds. The aforementioned user growth, along with the protocol’s transaction speeds, have led to increased market attention. The protocol also took a vocal approach in a re-brand from Matic in recent months. Accordingly, billionaire Mark Cuban has is a recent investor, and is quickly implementing it into his NFT portfolio company Lazy.com. Other recent partnerships include computing network Aleph.im, with a focus on security and permanence in the NFT market.

Following the news, $MATIC has continued to show strong growth with prices nearing record-highs, and is looking to crack the top 10 in crypto in terms of market cap.

26th May 2021

Bitcoin Bear Market Comes Down To Pivotal June Close

Bitcoin price is still below $40,000, after just weeks ago trading at over $64,000 per coin. The selloff shocked market participants of all sizes, prompting fears that the bull market is now over and a bear phase is next.

A trader who predicted this recent collapse months in advance using high timeframe technical analysis, now fears that a bear market could follow. But it all comes down to the pivotal June monthly close. Here’s why.

Bitcoin At Risk Of Bear Market If Bulls Can’t Close June At New Highs

When it comes to technical analysis, the highest timeframes offer the most dominant signals. This means that regardless of what’s going on on daily or shorter timeframes, if the weekly, monthly, or higher say the trend is up, that’s the direction the market heads.

Reversals have to begin on the smallest timeframes, however, it is within the high timeframe charts where the earliest warning signs are visible. This is no different for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any financial asset or cryptocurrency.

The problem is, on a rarely used high timeframe segment on the Bitcoin price chart, the top cryptocurrency is exhibiting an extremely bearish structure.

A sharp-eyed trader has spotted a hidden bearish divergence on the RSI across the five-month timeframe. Three-months, six-months, or a year are more commonly used, but that doesn’t discount the effectiveness of the segment.

bitcoin bear market RSI

Bear markets have always started off with a wick like the above | Source: BLX on TradingView.com

High Timeframe Technicals Point To Bear Market, According To Trader With Track Record

This is the same trader that spotted the first ever bearish divergence on the Bitcoin quarterly chart. The signal confirmed and the top cryptocurrency dropped by more than 50% in its worst monthly candle on record.

Bulls can undo the damage done and prevent an evening star pattern from forming on the monthly if they can close May above $45,000. However, it is the June close that would also finalize the five-month candle above.

The candle currently has the largest upside wick into resistance in the history of the chart, showing that bears were ready and waiting. Each wick left on the five-month timeframe, was followed by a bear market.

Is this time different, or is a bear market coming to crypto before Bitcoin ever gets to six figures like the market expects? And could that expectation cause the bear market to be the worst on record as investors finally give up on the dream?

Anything is possible, but bulls have a little over a month to take Bitcoin to such highs, or else the RSI could turn down and this bearish signal could confirm.

Featured image from Deposit Photos, Charts from TradingView.com

25th May 2021

H&R Block needs clear regulations before dealing with crypto taxes, CEO says

Ultimately, crypto taxing could be part of the business, H&R Block CEO Jeff Jones added.

24th May 2021

UPenn’s Wharton: DeFi Can “Transform Global Finance”

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business is consistently seen as one of the best business programs in the U.S., and is the oldest collegiate school of business on the globe. In a new ‘Blockchain and Digital Asset Project’ report, titled “DeFi Beyond the Hype”, Wharton School contributors detail the ins and outs of DeFi, and conclude that DeFi has the “potential to transform global finance”.

DeFi Beyond The Hype: An Overview

The Wharton report, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, provides an excellent high-level overview of the current DeFi landscape. On the first page of the twenty page brief, the team acknowledges that despite growth in DeFi services surging from under $1B in 2019 to over $80B in present day, DeFi as we know it is still “early in its maturation”.

The Wharton collaborators, led by Professor Kevin Werbach, bucket DeFi services into six different silos: stablecoins, exchanges, credit, derivatives, insurance, and asset management. The report goes on to take a deep dive into each of these silos and how DeFi operates within them, while still acknowledging that at times, the lines between them can get blurred. Werbach and team provide a strong fundamental overview looking at all the key parts of the DeFi machine as well (wallets, oracles, digital assets, etc.).

The team also outlines four “defining characteristics” of DeFi: engaging with financial services, trust-minimized operation and settlement (i.e., public permissionless blockchain integration), non-custodial design, and open, programmable, and composable architecture.

Related Reading | Top 10 DeFi Projects In Q2 2021

Addressing The Details

The report takes the time to address the gritty details that make DeFi so desirable for some, such as governance tokens and other incentives that drive liquidity. It also addresses the costs and benefits of this decentralization, and outlines the fine lines between centralized governance, partially decentralized governance, and decentralized governance.

Additionally, the report looks to outline opportunities and challenges in DeFi while being somewhat partial. Opportunities are vast, and include aspects such as reduced friction and transaction costs, improved accountability, improved market access, and greater inclusivity of financial services. However, they don’t come without inherent challenges, like throughput, operability across blockchains (and with traditional services), regulatory questions (particularly in the current landscape), and more.

Ethereum has been a focal point in the DeFi landscape. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

That’s A Wharton Wrap

The detailed report condenses a well-rounded full scope of DeFi in a thick twenty pages. However, beyond simply providing a broad perspective of what DeFi is, the Wharton team also takes the time to address protocols such as Uniswap and SushiSwap, asset pool protocols like Compound and AAVE, and more.

Wharton (and increasing academic institutions) are continuing to show and share their perspective around DeFi and blockchain tech as it develops. As the report aptly states, “tools are emerging to simplify the user experience on and across DeFi services”.

In closing, the report concludes that “DeFi will ultimately succeed or fail based on whether it can fulfill its promise of financial services that are open, trust-minimized, and non-custodial, yet still trustworthy”. It’s safe to conclude that there are many who believe that DeFi is well on it’s way to achieving exactly that.

Related Reading | DeFi Is About To Undergo A Radical Transformation

24th May 2021

Building The Case That The Bitcoin Bottom Is In

Bitcoin price is back at $37,000, recovering from a frightening plunge to as low as $30,000. The selloff struck fear into the market unlike never before, making buying the dip a scary risk to take.

However, there’s several signs that the bottom could be in, all while sentiment has turned fully bearish and the market expects far deeper lows. Could that in and of itself be a sign the bottom is in?

Recapping The Recent Crypto Market Correction

The recent peak in Bitcoin price was a “top” that very few saw coming even though from a technical standpoint, it was obvious. BTC was moving off exchanges and fundamentals supported much higher prices, but after such a strong run up, the top trending cryptocurrency was bound to correct.

And correct it did – by a full 50% and then some. Historically it is one of the most severe bull market corrections. The severity of the Black Thursday move caused a polar opposite reaction to the upside.

But could a similar severity in the recent collapse also be a catalyst for propelling prices much higher, and not the beginning of a bear market as many would expect? For one, sentiment is ripe for a reversal.

Stacking Up The Signs That The Bottom Is In For Bitcoin

The crypto market fear and greed index is at one of the most frightened readings yet, after spending nearly a full year in greed mode. Contrarian investors all recommend buying the blood in the streets and being greedy when others are fearful. Being fearful while others were greedy, clearly has paid off for anyone who took out a short position at the top – as rare as that may have been.

But there’s a lot more signs out there than that.

bitcoin bull market RSI

BTC bounced right on rising RSI support | BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Perhaps the biggest technical factor suggesting that Bitcoin has bottomed, is the fact that three-day Relative Strength Index has bounced off an ascending trendline that’s supported all of the past bottoms in crypto.

There’s a bounce in December 2018 and again on Black Thursday – and once again now. A similar story can be seen in the chart above which also includes a look at how the 2017 bull market held a similar rising support structure.

A bottom here, suggests one more impulse in Bitcoin before the bull market has ended. That means that the pain from the recent shakeout isn’t yet over, as sellers could be forced to FOMO back in a much higher prices, helping to drive the fury of the final impulse.

Interestingly, the crash landed right where the parabolic curve for the greater bull trend would support another base to rise higher, adding more credence to the bottom being in.

bitcoin ichimoku bottom

A long-term bull trend is still holding | BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Also on the three-day, Bitcoin price is holding in the Ichimoku cloud after piercing below it. At support there’s a bullish hammer candle forming. If bulls can follow through here and push the leading cryptocurrency by market cap out of the cloud, the bull market will remain unbroken and new highs will be in the forecast.

Remember, technicals said a top was in and no one saw it coming. Currently, things are some what mixed but the case for the bottom builds by the day.

Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com

24th May 2021

Uganda’s finance watchdog calls for crypto regulations in the country

With exchanges slow to fall under FIA oversight, Uganda’s AML watchdog wants the government to make a move on crypto regulations.

24th May 2021

Central Bank of Kuwait issues warning against crypto investments

The Central Bank of Kuwait says that a “real” currency is one issued by the state.

24th May 2021

Mark Cuban: We’re In “The Great Unwind”

In a tweet reply over the weekend, billionaire businessman and crypto advocate Mark Cuban described the current price action as part of the “great unwind”. The comment was in response to Larry Cermak, Director of Research at The Block, and emphasized the implications of over-leveraged traders leading to ‘unwinding’.

In a response to Newsweek about the tweet specifically, Cuban elaborated, “if there is one thing crypto enthusiasts lose track of, it’s that at its base, there are a lot of participants from token holders to validators, miners and others all get rewards”.

Cuban And Crypto

Mark Cuban is no stranger to crypto. The Dallas Mavericks owner, ‘Shark Tank’ regular, and serial entrepreneur has been outspoken about smart contracts, NFT projects, and more.

In a detailed email exchange published by Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler, Cuban describes present-day NFTs as “proof of concepts” for what’s to come. Cuban pressed further when asked about smart contracts’ use case in things like mortgages, “smart contracts on blockchains, particularly Ethereum, is an enormous game changer that every company will use”.

Mark Cuban, of course, has put his money where his mouth is too, as an early investor in crypto tools like OpenSea, CryptoSlam.io, and others; additionally, he’s doubled down recently on allowing his Dallas Mavericks to accept bitcoin, ethereum, and dogecoin for ticket sales in light of Elon Musk’s comments surrounding Tesla and bitcoin.

According to Mark, it’s all “no different than the internet of 1995 where people weren’t quite sure but eventually they saw the network effect and value. Smart contracts are going to eat a lot of the software-as-a-service world.”

Volatility Just Beginning?

Cuban insists that the best projects will persevere. Nonetheless, it’s likely that the rollercoaster ride of ups and downs will continue.

The crypto ‘fear and greed index‘ recently hit a resounding level 12, a level rarely seen. In March of 2020, the index scored around 10, and in April 2018, a record level 16 was hit. The index currently sits at 10 (“extreme fear”) at time of writing.

Volatility is nothing new, but been exacerbated recently| Source: CRYPTOCAP on TradingView.com

Mark Cuban’s Love For Ethereum

Cuban undoubtedly understands that bitcoin is the most established store of value in the crypto space currently, but the projects being built on ethereum seem to be one of the most exciting major players in the crypto space – emphasized by his public statements and by his private investments.

Cuban has said the impact of Ethereum 2.0 “could be greater than we currently imagine” and has invested in ethereum-based projects, such as Polygon.

Despite the rocky ride, Cuban seems to have his eyes laser-focused on the long-run.

22nd May 2021

VORTECS Report: While Bitcoin gained just 10% since Jan 3, this crypto trading strategy netted 2,150% ROI

As the crypto market plunge takes its toll on Bitcoin profits, some traders are using strategies based on sentiment and trading data to secure outsized gains.

21st May 2021

Algomint, Algorand’s Digital Asset Minter, Set To Arrive Q3 2021

In a press release this week, the team at Algorand has announced that Algomint, the “golden bridge to the Algorand DeFi ecosystem”, is coming to market in Q3 2021. The platform will bring liquidity and unlock further DeFi potential in the Algorand network.

Algomint

The Algomint platform will allow users to engage in investing, trading, sending and receiving, borrowing and lending, staking, and yield fielding with 46,000 transactions per second and $0.001 fee per transaction.

Algomint will allow users to trade bitcoin in the Algorand DeFi marketplace by having them mint goBTC on the platform, while locking the original bitcoin on a 1:1 ratio in a secured 3rd party custody vault. Users will burn goBTC by the same ratio when they go to withdrawal bitcoin from the network. Algomint will utilize this same functionality for other cryptocurrency assets, such as ETH and USDT. With a Q3 product launch, the platform will initially offer goBTC and goETH as the first core assets to serve the ecosystem. Algomint will also look to engage with users through a governance token, goMNT, which is expected to also launch in Q3 2021. In the following quarter, the team anticipates launch goUSD while introducing programmable liquidity by way of the team’s Balancer Decentralized Exchange.

The Team

The Algomint team is led by Meld Gold founders Michael Cotton and AJ Milne. Meld Gold leverages Algorand’s protocol to add efficiency and accessibility in the gold supply chain.

Algorand’s team sees the clear potential around the explosion of DeFi and applicable use case with Algorand’s protocol. The press release cites annual DeFi growth at a 7,500% rate, despite Ethereum’s challenges around speed and transaction costs. The release also notes that only 1% of the Wall Street capital inflow this year is being applied in the DeFi network, alluding to substantial potential in the marketplace.

$ALGO looks to continue efforts in the DeFi landscape. | Source: ALGO-USD on TradingView.com

What’s Being Said

In the press release, Algorand COO Sean Ford stated that Algomint will be “providing a necessary bridge for digital assets to enter the growing Algorand ecosystem” and that he is excited for the corresponding opportunities for users to engage on the platform. “Tools like Algomint serve as foundational components for the incredible expansion of DeFi on Algorand that we are currently seeing”, he added.

And partners echoed that sentiment. CFA and Chief Investment Officer of Apollo Capital Henrik Andersson added to release that Algomint would be “essentially opening the Algorand network to the rapid growth we are seeing elsewhere in the DeFi markets”. Andersson saw the value proposition as especially valuable, emphasizing that “having the ability to take advantage of transaction speeds of 4 seconds and costs of less than $0.001” would provide the market “a very different proposition”.

21st May 2021

Volatility Ahead: Why The Chaos In Bitcoin And Crypto Is Only Beginning

Bitcoin price plummeted faster and lower than anyone expected, leaving behind a trail of liquidations and investors in shock. Crypto prices across the board tanked by more than 50%, and in most cases have already rebounded by at least 25% of what was lost.

The sudden rollercoaster after such a steep ascent makes sense, sending volatility soaring. Except even with this much mayhem across the market right now, it is still nothing compared to what the cryptocurrency is used to. This fact could suggest that the bull market has only just begun with the latest crash.

Comparing Crypto To A Thrill-Filled Theme Park Ride

Theme parks can be a blast. Rollercoasters are especially fun, but definitely can give you a good scare. The ride starts slowly, slow building and rising in a methodical manner to keep anticipation climbing as heights increase.

Once you get high enough, it is hard not to stop paying full attention to the ride to get a load of the view. It is in that moment when the momentum turns and in a flash you’re back where your started. Sound familiar?

Bitcoin, like rollercoasters, can have a lot of twists and turns, and this latest crash hasn’t been very different than the cryptocurrency’s usual behaviors.

The last year of “only up” has been a lot more unusual. Bitcoin usually rises and falls, wiping out 60 to 70% from the price per coin and market cap. It is only now with a mere 50% crash that volatility is picking up, suggesting either further collapse, only the start of the bull run, or possibly both scenarios.

bitcoin historical volatility

Historical volatility suggests that the Bitcoin is only just getting warmed up | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

HODL On: Notorious Bitcoin Volatility Has Only Just Returned

Historical volatility is a tool used to measure – just like it sounds – how volatile an asset is throughout its history. When Bitcoin was in the earliest phases of price discovery, volatility was insanely high, and after the dust settled, it stayed flat for several years.

It wasn’t until late 2017 when although prices had appreciated in crypto, the bull market really got going and historical volatility returned to Bitcoin.

Except it lasted for an even shorter phase than before. Even the small bullish impulse to $14,000 in mid-2019 resulted in more volatility overall in the cryptocurrency market.

Today, even with a massive $28,000 per coin collapse, volatility in Bitcoin is still uncharacteristically low. This latest shock to the market, might only be the start of a storm that’s to come. Can you hold on and survive?

Featured image from iStockPhotos, Charts from TradingView.com

21st May 2021

Dubai Airport Free Zone welcomes crypto assets with new SCA agreement

Dubai aims to attract foreign crypto investors.

20th May 2021

Two Paths Of A Bitcoin Bull Run, And If A Bear Phase Is Next

Bitcoin price has plummeted more than 50% from recent highs, falling to as low as $30,000 in a matter of a flash. The selloff was enough to shock the entire market, causing the most liquidations and coins to be deposited since Black Thursday.

There’s now talk of the bull run being over, however, there’s potentially two different paths that the cryptocurrency could take according to the RSI and past bull market performance.

Is The Top Of The Crypto Bull Run In?

After more than one full year of an uptrend, the volatile crypto market wiped out months of progress in days. The sharp reversal caused a 50% drop across the board, and it was enough to spook the market.

Several top signals also appeared, such as the Pi Cycle Top indicator, and the Relative Strength Index reaching overbought levels on the monthly. The monthly RSI, however, has been swatted down by bears and back into the normal range of the oscillator.

bitcoin bull market A B C

The monthly RSI is looking especially bearish | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

There is also a bearish divergence stretching across past bull cycle tops, which could provide clues as to what’s to come.

If bears can close the monthly Relative Strength Index back below overbought levels, then the bull market could be over according to scenario B from 2017. Scenario A, however, shows bull holding the key level, and making another drastic push higher to finish the bull market.

Stormy Bitcoin Forecast Could Lead To Unexpected Scenario

In scenario A, the stock-to-flow model should be proven accurate, and the leading cryptocurrency by market cap will head towards hundreds of thousands of dollars per coin.

But what if the stock-to-flow model, and every major analyst that’s glanced at a Bitcoin chart is dead wrong about expectations, or something catastrophic happens? It sounds unrealistic, but nothing is guaranteed in markets – not even the success of Bitcoin.

Droves of analysts have produced charts that demonstrate what that path to hundreds of thousands looks like, but what might a devastating collapse look like instead?

bitcoin ichimoku disaster

Beware of a weak spot in the Ichimoku cloud | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

If a bear market takes place now and with the stock-to-flow model causing expectations to be so high, the short investment horizon of impatient investors could lead to a sharper selloff if BTC isn’t trading at hundreds of thousands before the year’s end.

A bull market failure and failure to produce the results investors are expecting, could cause investors to abandoned the cryptocurrency completely. Unless they’re in it for the tech. Forewarning of such an event, is a weak spot in the monthly Ichimoku cloud.

The monthly price chart in Bitcoin also is forming a massive bearish wedge taking place across nearly a decade. A breakdown could set the trajectory for passing through the Kumo twist, which is a common setup according to how the indicator itself works.

And while anyone even remotely bullish on Bitcoin would immediately write this off, there’s no denying the cloud twist is there. Bulls also didn’t see the recent crash coming – could they also be blind to this possibility?

Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com

20th May 2021

U.S. Treasury Calls For IRS Reporting Of $10K+ Crypto Transfers

Continued political buzz is abundant lately around crypto, and today is no exception. In a initial report from Bloomberg this morning, the U.S. Treasury has shared intent to require businesses, and likely individuals as well, that transfer $10,000 USD and above in crypto to report the transactions to the IRS. The move is part of a broader plan from the Biden administration to strengthen tax compliance.

The Treasury Talk

The information was sourced from a Treasury report titled ‘The American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda‘. “As with cash transactions, businesses that receive cryptoassets with a fair market value of more than USD 10,000 would also be reported on. Although cryptocurrency is a small share of current business transactions, such comprehensive reporting is necessary to minimize the incentives and opportunity to shift income out of the new information reporting regime”, the report stated.

Interestingly, the report specifically cited both cash and crypto as being viable shields from tax reporting; specifically, the report even describes crypto as posing a “significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion”. The report goes on to acknowledge that crypto transactions “are likely to rise in importance in the next decade”.

The report is likely to tie with IRS Form 8300, which requires individuals, companies, corporations, partnerships, trusts, estates and the like to report cash payments of over $10,000 USD.

Continued investment in broader crypto has the federal government paying attention | Source: CRYPTOCAP - TOTAL on TradingView.com

Flurry Of Federal Chatter

The U.S. government has had increasing amounts of public-facing commentary. The Treasury’s commentary seems to ring a bit inconsistent from broader messages. Today’s report comes after two Federal Reserve policymakers stated earlier this week that cryptocurrency does not have a “reach into the economy that has systemic implications” for the Fed. St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard and Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic both noted the volatility of crypto being a known trait, with Bostic adding that crypto was not “something I really incorporate very much into how I think about where our policy should be”.

The U.S. isn’t alone in the public discussion, either. Norway’s central bank has expressed concern that crypto’s volatility could be concerning for their banking system, and of course China’s potential rigid stance of crypto, with mining especially at the forefront, has consistently been a point of conversation in the space.

Of course, institutions have held a variety of views globally as well. Wells Fargo has warmed up to crypto investments, along with other major U.S. institutions, however the Bank of Canada recently stated that volatility in cryptocurrency assets is an emerging vulnerability for the country’s financial system.

20th May 2021