Bitcoin – Bears Fail to Take a Bite, as Bitcoin Holds onto $4,000

Bitcoin holds onto $4,000 levels through the early hours. The bulls will be targetting $4,200 levels, but resistance will be high at $4,100.

Bitcoin fell by 1.14% on Thursday. Reversing a 1.63% gain from Wednesday, Bitcoin ended the day at $4,008.8.

Following a relatively range-bound early part of the day, Bitcoin struck a mid-morning intraday high $4,145 before hitting reverse.

Breaking through the first major resistance level at $4,095.67 and second major resistance level at $4,136.33, Bitcoin broke through to $4,100 levels for the first time since 10th January.

The reversal saw Bitcoin slide to a late morning intraday low $3,918.5 before finding support. The sell-off saw Bitcoin fall through the first major support level at $3,988.67 before recovering.

A range-bound 2nd half of the day saw Bitcoin find plenty of support at sub-$4,000 to close out the day at $4,000 levels.

Elsewhere

Across the top 10 cryptos, it was a sea of red on the day. Leading the way down were Stellar’s Lumen and Litecoin. The pair fell by 5.36% and by 5.07% respectively.

While Bitcoin saw the most modest losses on the day, Tron’s TRX and Ethereum also fared relatively well under the selling pressure. Tron’s TRX ended the day with a 1.34% loss, while Ethereum dropped by 2%.

In spite of the day’s losses seen across the majors, it’s been a solid week. Leading the way is EOS, which has surged by 32.4%.

Other notable moves through the week include Binance, Bitcoin Cash ABC and Litecoin. The trio managed to see double-digit gains through to the end of Thursday.

For Bitcoin Cash, the market appears to have made up its mind. Bitcoin Cash SV fell back to the number 11 spot by market cap. With just a 2.39% rise for the current week, there may be more trouble ahead.

The news wires have been relatively quiet. Barring the odd bullish call from the likes of Elon Musk, a lack of negative news has supported the upward trend through February.

For the Bitcoin bulls, hopes of the SEC approving 3 Bitcoin ETF applications come off the back of some optimistic comments from VanEck in the week. The decision will be announced on the 3 applications within the next 45-days.

The timing of the SEC’s decision, assuming it’s a favorable outcome, could work out well for the Bitcoin bulls. The current market momentum will need to be maintained to support more significant inflows. Bitcoin is up by 14.4% in February. A number of daily rallies delivered the much-needed boost to reverse January’s losses.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 0.38% to $4,024.2. A relatively range bound start to the day saw Bitcoin rise from a morning low $4,005.9 to a morning high $4,037.5 before easing back. The day’s major support and resistance levels were left untested through the early hours.

For the day ahead

A hold onto $4,020 levels through the morning would support a move through the morning high to bring $4,100 levels into play before any pullback. A breakthrough to $4,100 levels would bring the first major resistance level at $4,129.7 into play before any pullback. We would expect Bitcoin to fall short of $4,200 levels on the day. Thursday’s high $4,145 and the day’s first major resistance level will likely peg Bitcoin back from a breakout from $4,100 levels.

Failure to hold onto $4,020 levels could see Bitcoin hit reverse later in the day. A fall through the morning low to sub-$4,000 levels could see Bitcoin call on support at the first major support level at $3,903.2 before any recovery.

We would expect Bitcoin to steer clear of sub-$3,900 support levels on the day.

Bob Mason

1 hour ago (Feb 22, 2019 4:27 AM GMT)

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin and BTC Futures Analysis – January 2019 CryptoCompare Exchange Review

The January Exchange Review focuses on analyses that relate to exchange volumes, and includes an analysis of the highest volume producing jurisdictions, as well as market segmentation by exchange fee model.

We also evaluate how spot volumes vs futures volumes have developed historically to date, including both crypto exchange (BitMEX and BitflyerFX) and traditional exchange (CBOE and CME) futures volumes. Finally, we conduct an analysis of bitcoin trading into various fiats and stablecoins, as well as an overview of how exchange web traffic has changed over the previous few months.

Country Analysis

Maltese-registered exchanges represented the majority of trading volume, followed by those legally registered in Hong Kong and Samoa. Monthly trading volume from Maltese-registered exchanges dropped 17% since December, while that of Hong Kong and Samoa-registered exchanges decreased by 5.5% and increased by 9% respectively.

Predominant Fee Type

Exchanges that charge taker fees represented 84% of total exchange volume in January, while those that implement trans-fee mining (TFM) represent 15%. Fee-charging exchanges traded a total of 141 billion USD in January, while those that implement TFM traded 25 billion USD. The remaining volume represented trading by exchanges that charge no trading fees, totalling 2.8 billion USD.

Futures Trading

The proportion of futures trading volume decreased from 28% in December to 24% in January. bitFlyerFX traded the highest amount of BTC futures volume in January with a daily average transactional value of 1.13 billion USD (down 23% since December), followed by BitMEX perpetual futures at 665 million USD (down 41% since December). Futures products from traditional regulated exchanges (CME and CBOE) represented 11.7% of the Bitcoin to USD futures market in January, up from 6.36% in December.

Fiat Capabilities

Monthly trading volume from exchanges that offer fiat pairs decreased by 26.5% in January to 37.5 billion USD, while crypto-to-crypto exchange volume decreased by 7.2% to 132 billion USD. Following this large decline in volume from exchanges that offer fiat trading pairs, in January they represented 22% of total spot volume, down from 26% in December.

Web Traffic

Total exchange web traffic continues its downward trend along with spot volumes, each dropping 13.5% and 12.4% respectively in January. According to calculations based on Alexa data, total monthly unique visitors across CryptoCompare exchanges decreased from 12 million in December to 10.4 million in January.

Bitcoin to Fiat Volumes

In January, 48% of Bitcoin trading into fiat was made up of the US Dollar (1.47 million BTC), down from 57% in December. BTC trading into JPY decreased less (-24%) than that traded into USD (-49%) and EUR (-37%) since December. The USD, JPY and EUR made up 90% of total trading from Bitcoin into fiat in the previous month and maintained dominance in January at 89% of BTC to fiat volume.

Bitcoin to Stablecoin Volumes

Bitcoin trading into USDT represented 65% of trading into stablecoins and fiat coins in January, up from the 63.7% seen in December. USDT, PAX, USDC and GUSD represent the most popular stablecoins in terms of Bitcoin trading volume. BTC trading into PAX increased 66% in January at 114,000 BTC in total; however, USDT still represents that majority at 5.9 million BTC.

Exchange Volumes

Top Exchange Volumes – ZB was the top exchange by total volume in January, followed by Binance and OKEX. The total volume for ZB in January was 19.6 billion USD, a 6.2% increase from December. The total volumes for Binance and OKEX fell 15% and 19.4% respectively in January.

Trans-Fee Mining Exchanges – CoinBene was the largest TFM exchange in January, followed by ZBG and EXX. CoinBene traded 10 billion USD in total volume in January, down 3.2% since December. ZBG traded 6 billion USD and EXX traded 5.5 billion USD, up 18 and 20% since December respectively.

Decentralised Exchanges – Ethermium was the largest DEX in January, followed by WavesDEX and OpenLedger. DEXs continue to represent only a small fraction of global spot exchange volume (0.19%), trading a monthly total of 385 million USD.

HODLX February 20, 2019

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin gets delayed boost from JPMorgan’s embrace of crypto

Bitcoin is approaching $4,000 for the first time since the start of the year, as the largest cryptocurrency gets a delayed boost from the announcement last week that JPMorgan has developed a prototype digital coin that it plans to use to speed up payments between corporate customers.

“What some people have pointed to is that because they’re using distributed ledger technology and they’re calling it a cryptocurrency, that could have a positive effect on the industry,” said Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro in Tel Aviv.

Greenspan credited a jump in Ethereum over the weekend tied to the production of coins for helping to create an optimistic environment that pushed most crypto prices higher. Ether rose 17 percent Monday, and was up 3.6 percent to around $146 as of 10:30 a.m. in New York. Bitcoin climbed as much as 3.1 percent Tuesday to $3,970.

At least one measure followed by technical analysts suggests Bitcoin has more room to run, with the digital token in a solid buy trend for the first time since mid-December.

In addition, the VERA Convergence Divergence indicator turned positive today for the first time in over two months, indicating this rally may take Bitcoin over the heavily resisted $4,000 level.

The last time Bitcoin triggered a buy signal it gained $1,100 over the next 10 days.

Bloomberg 20 February 2019

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markets Hit Six Week High as Altcoin Rally Adds Another $10 Billion

Yesterday’s crypto market rally has continued for a second day adding a further $10 billion to total market capitalization.

The push has driven markets over $134 billion which is the highest they have been since the big dump on January 10, almost six weeks ago. Around ten days ago crypto markets were depressed at $111 billion, since then they have recovered around 20% to current levels. The big question is can this rally turn into a longer term uptrend or is another mega dump imminent.

Ethereum initiated the run yesterday when it pumped 12%, outperforming most of the top altcoins, and Bitcoin itself. Today’s big performer is EOS which has jumped 24% to $3.60 at the time of writing. EOS hit a high of $3.79 a few hours ago which is its best price since late-November’s big market purge. Daily volume has surged to over $2.3 billion pushing EOS market cap to $3.25 billion taking fourth place back from Litecoin. There does not appear to be anything specific driving EOS at the moment aside from fear of missing out (fomo) so a pullback is expected.

Bitcoin Cash has had another solid day’s performance as it gains 13% taking it to $147, chasing down LTC just above it with a climb of 7% to $47.50. Ethereum has also made a further 7% on the day taking its price up to $147 and pushing it over $2 billion clear of XRP in terms of market cap.

Bitcoin is approaching heavy resistance at $4,000 but it is still climbing at the moment with a 5% gain on the day to a high of $3,970 a few hours ago. BTC has since pulled back to $3,920 where it is holding for now.

Other top performers are altcoins which have been hit the hardest in recent weeks namely Cardano, IOTA, Dash, and Ethereum Classic, all climbing 6 to 8 percent on the day. At the moment it is the altcoins which are enjoying the biggest gains over the past 48 hours. Some analysts have predicted the beginning of the “altseason” by looking at total market cap for them without Bitcoin. It has just broken the yearlong trend line and Bitcoin dominance is falling back towards 50%.

At the moment things are looking positive for the majority of altcoins and for once Bitcoin is playing catch-up. It is a pattern repeated countless times though and big brother BTC will have its day sooner or later.

Luke Thompson February 19, 2019

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Analysis: Aiming for Triangle Top Next!

Bitcoin broke above its short-term descending channel to confirm that the climb is gaining traction. This also completes a breakout from the bullish flag continuation pattern, indicating that a climb of the same height as the mast is in order.

The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA to confirm that the path of least resistance is to the upside. In other words, the uptrend is more likely to continue than to reverse. This might even lead to a break above the triangle top on the 4-hour time frame.

If so, bitcoin might see a climb that’s the same height as the triangle, which spans $3,300 to $4,400. This might take it all the way up to the forecast of “$5,000 in the next ten days” from the previous week.

So far, the 100 SMA is holding up well as a dynamic support level while the 200 SMA could also hold as a floor near the $3,600 mark in the event of a pullback. A break below the triangle bottom at $3,500 could signal that bearish pressure is back in play.

RSI is already in the overbought zone to indicate that buyers are tired and sellers might take over. In that case, price might also pull back to the broken channel top around $3,700. Stochastic has more room to climb before hitting the overbought zone, which means that buyers could have the upper hand for much longer.

The recent upside break would likely draw more bullish forecasts from analysts, possibly extending the rally even further. Meanwhile, anticipation for the Fidelity institutional platform is also building up as the March launch data approaches.

If this pushes through, a pickup in volumes from institution is expected, likely drawing even more bullish interest. On the other hand, another delay could spur a major correction once more.

By Rachel Lee February 18, 2019

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member