The price of Bitcoin has gone back up following a big weekend sell-off that stroke a major hit to the cryptocurrency and other digital currencies on the market. Luckily, things have been picking up since Sunday evening as intense buying pressure slowly pumped the price back up to the $2,300 mark, so Bitcoin is now trading very close to where it was one week ago.
Such a drastic price swing hasn’t happened in a long while for Bitcoin, as over the course of a single weekend it lost nearly $500, or around 21% from its Friday price, only to go back up to where it was two days later. Coinciding with Bitcoin’s loss was a drop in Ethereum price, which dipped down to around $130, or 67% of it’s all time-high.
Thus far, there are several reasons circulating the Bitcoin community that could be blamed for the price drop. Some say it’s a natural correction following months of speculative buying, others claim it’s because of Chinese exchanges going back into action, and some even suggest it was the mining community to blame. Whatever the cause, it’s good to see Bitcoin surviving such volatility, again.
Buyers Come Back
During the past week since our last update, the price of Bitcoin suffered some brutal changes as a major bearish pressure squeezed the market. The lowest price point was hit on Sunday afternoon, when one Bitcoin traded for $1,852.24, while the highest was on Thursday, when the price reached $2,392.43.
Naturally, trading volume went through the roof during this time, starting with $1 billion on Sunday and going to $1.5 billion over the next days, suggesting there was heavy profit making thanks to the price drops. But currently, the volume sits at $1.56 billion, while the market cap is at $39 billion.
Our technical analysis shows a clear path in the trading market, as all 12 of our moving averages and 10 out of 12 oscillators are sending a buying signal. However, the SMA 100 has also dipped below the SMA 200 on this time-frame to show there is less resistance on the downside, so all is not safe.
But overall, with the high volume and strong bullish pressure currently seen on the market, the price looks headed further up. Yet, it’s always good to keep your eyes out for any signs of trend changes, as things can switch course really fast.
BIP 91 Gains Support
The long debate over the best way to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem seems to be finally coming to an end, but for real this time. The proposed upgrade is called BIP 91, and it will prevent the two most supported solutions Segwit2x and BIP 148 from splitting the blockchain and causing damage to Bitcoin, hopefully.
Namely, BIP 91 is a newly proposed way to make both the BIP 148 and SegWit 2x scaling solutions compatible, so that a coin-split could be avoided until the most highly supported proposal wins over . Both solutions implement SegWit (Segregated Witness), although they do it in different ways. The deadline for BIP 91 gaining full support is August 1st, after which the compatibility with BIP 148 will expire.
Currently BIP 91 has gained over 60% support, with 80% being the needed number to “lock it in” the blockchain for good. But if market trends are an indication, it seems that the mining community is confident in this solution, as the price has jumped back up very soon after BIP 91’s support started picking up. Let’s just hope miners see this proposal all the way through.