- Bull or bear market? The Bitcoin price dropped again below the 8,000 US dollar mark.
- However, there is both, a bullish and bearish outlook on the Bitcoin market. The experts are divided.
- While the Bitcoin halving and the history speak for a continuing bull market, the trading volume and the chart analysis point to a bearish trend.
Since Bitcoin broke through the USD 10,000 mark on September 21st, the Bitcoin price has been bearish. The entire cryptocurrency market seems to have lost the bullish momentum of previous months since that day. The market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency market has dropped considerably from around 263 billion US dollars to 215 billion US dollars.
A few hours ago, the Bitcoin price (again) broke through the important 8,000 USD mark when it fell from around 8,065 USD to 7,850 USD within 15 minutes.
For many investors, this raises the question of whether this is merely a correction of the rapid rise from USD 3,821 on March 1, 2019 to USD 12,913 on June 26, 2019, or whether Bitcoin has long since stumbled back into the next bear market.
Experts disagree: Bullish perspective
The fact is that there is currently a downward trend, which confirms the bearish sentiment of recent weeks. On Crypto-Twitter there are mainly negative voices. This is also reflected in the Fear & Greed Index (FGI). The value has been relatively constant over the past weeks at 40, which means that the bears are in a lurking position. In addition, a cross of death has been forming on the daily chart for a long time and could mean further price losses in the long run.
However, there are some arguments that Bitcoin is still in a bull market. Although the BTC price has corrected by around 38 percent from its high in June 2019, it has still risen by over 110 percent since January 1, 2019. As GalaxyBTC noted on Twitter, a 40% correction in bull markets is not uncommon for Bitcoin. This has happened several times in recent years.
People waiting for $6K $BTC keep forgetting one thing.
In bull markets $BTC drops 40% and then doubles its price. pic.twitter.com/E6zbjap6Av
— Galaxy (@galaxyBTC) October 17, 2019
Furthermore, the Bitcoin halving in about six months suggests that it is currently only a recovery phase and that there will be another bull run in the long run until halving. As PlanB stated on Twitter, BTC rose from USD 5 to USD 12 half a year before its first halving in 2012. This represents an increase of 140%. In 2016, BTC rose from USD 350 to USD 650, which is an increase of 85.71%.
We are at about 6 months before May 2020 #bitcoin halving.
In 2012 btc jumped from $5 to $12 (2.3x) in those 6 months before the halving. In 2016 btc jumped from $350 to $650 (1.7x). pic.twitter.com/DKSQBOO2TD
— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) October 16, 2019
Bearish perspective
However, there are also some arguments for a bearish perspective on the Bitcoin market. The Bitcoin price has failed to push above a relatively low resistance level of USD 8,374 in recent days, which makes a major retreat into the mid-$7,000 region more likely, as crypto analyst Josh Rager notes via Twitter.
https://twitter.com/Josh_Rager/status/1184896228238221318
Also of concern is the current low trading volume on the Bitcoin market, which makes the market more susceptible to whale transactions. The recent price loss was preceded by several significant BTC transactions on exchanges, including a 10,000 BTC transaction sent to Binance.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 10,000 #BTC (80,670,856 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Binance
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 17, 2019
Since its peak in July this year, the weekly Bitcoin trading volume on BitMEX, the largest exchange for long and short contracts, has fallen from $55 billion to around $15 billion (more than 72 percent).
BitMEX’s trading volume for short and long positions is seen by many traders as an indicator of future developments as it is the largest margin trading platform in the cryptocurrency market and the short and long positions may have a large impact on Bitcoin’s short-term price development.
It therefore remains to be seen whether the bull or the bear will prevail in the next few days. Both perspectives have strong arguments.