According to Michaël van de Poppe nothing has changed. We’re still in a bull market.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting local lows of $41,960 on Bitstamp. Its lowest since September 30. As panic set in, leveraged positions unwound and traders capitulated, 24-hour cross-crypto liquidations passing $2.5 billion.
These buy target lows were accompanied by renewed predictions for this cycle’s bullish peak, which, as in April this year, place BTC/USD at up to $400,000.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD back at $57,000 Thursday, having come full circle in 24 hours.
The pair had briefly hit $59,000 into the Wall Street open the day prior. This failing to hold as another round of macro triggers skewed sentiment to the downside once more. Bitcoin thus fell in line with stocks reacting, it seemed, to continued concern over the new coronavirus omicron variant. The S&P 500 ended the day down 1.2%. With a sense of frustration pervading. Crypto markets analysts took the opportunity to reassert a longer-range perspective.
Ethereum Preserves Strength on BTC pair
A small silver lining came from Ether (ETH) on the day, which neared a rematch of its highest levels since mid-2018.
Losing less than Bitcoin in the crash versus the dollar, ETH/BTC bucked the trend to pass 0.0831.
Bitcoin “Appears on Track”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed the pair acting within a small range around the $50,000 mark overnight, this yet to become firm support.
“Chop, chop, chop it is for Bitcoin,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe wrote on the day.
Amid broadly calmer conditions despite macro markets dealing with an unprecedented debt default from China’s Evergrande property giant, analysts thus focused increasingly on longer-term phenomena to gauge Bitcoin price action’s overall health.
Despite the similarities between cycles, however, commentators have conceded that this time, Bitcoin will likely take longer to reach its cycle peak, leaving December without a classic blow-off top.
Conclusion
Twitter account TechDev summarized Wednesday in an optimistic discussion comparing this year to previous post-halving years 2013 and 2017 .$50k is likely to be resistance for a decent amount of time now unless stonks to incredible things.
Finally, Cointelegraph market analyst Jordan Finneseth discusses why the typical 4 year market cycle may be lengthening. Are we currently witnessing it? With institutions showing more and more interest in cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin, such as NFTs, gaming tokens, and the metaverse, will it be another year before a true bear market?
Bulls might be focused on the Bitcoin reserves held at exchanges, which continues to descend and currently sits at the lowest level in three years. According to data from CryptoQuant, there are now less than 2.27 million BTC deposited at exchanges and having fewer coins available for trading signals that investors are unwilling to sell in the short term.
This is a dynamic that many investors consider to be bullish.
Bitcoin bears need a gentle push to sub-$50,000 to score a $300 million profit. On the other hand, bulls would need a 7.2% price recovery from the current $50,500 to reduce their loss by half.
Considering the $2 billion liquidation of leverage long positions on Dec. 4, bulls are likely trying to stay afloat and will be unwilling to add more risk right now. It would be unnecessarily ineffective for bullish investors to waste their efforts trying to salvage this short-term loss. So, in this instance, bears look set to maintain the upper hand in this weekly options expiry.