The past week was another stormy period for Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space as the worlds’ most dominant digital coin failed to break away from its $3,500 range while another scandal shook the crypto market. Although the USD value of the coin is similar to where it was a week ago, the trading market is clearly in a bearish mood, signaling there may be more drops coming up ahead.
One of the biggest news updates we saw last week was the public endorsement of Bitcoin by Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, during his interview on the Joe Rogan Experience. During the podcast, which ended up setting the internet ablaze, Dorsey discussed blockchain and Bitcoin among other topics like free speech, Twitter, and more. While on the subject, Dorsey told Rogan that he believes “the internet will have a native currency” which he thinks will be Bitcoin.
However, according to Hacked magazine, Dorsey’s endorsement for the coin is probably due to self-interest. Reportedly, the Joe Rogan podcast is the sponsored by the Cash App – a product developed by Square of which Dorsey is a founder and CEO. AS you may already know, Cash App also has an interest in the Bitcoin space as it allows users to buy and sell BTC directly from their phones.
Bitcoin Drops from Selling Pressure
Bitcoin’s USD price is nearly the same as it was a week ago, despite the cryptocurrency climbing higher during the weekend. In the past seven days, the highest the coin climbed was on Sunday, when 1 BTC was valued at $3,516.14 while the lowest price point was hit in the morning hours today, when Bitcoin touched a USD price of $3,419.33. The 24-hour trading volume remained steady throughout this period, circulating mostly around $5 billion and showing no signs of sudden upticks. As of now, volume is at $5.2 billion while the market capitalization is at $59.9 billion.
Our technical analysis shows us that the market is clearly in a selling mood, with 8 out of 12 oscillators and 11 out of 12 moving averages being pro-sell. The SMA 100 has also fallen below the SMA 200, showing that there’s less resistance on the downward course. With a similar trend observed on the short-term charts, we can conclude that Bitcoin is headed for another price test. If the selling pressure doesn’t stop, you can expect to see further drops.
Death of Crypto-Exchange CEO Locks $190 Million
Another update that shook the cryptocurrency sector last week was the news of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga losing a reported $190 million of users’ funds. As reported by Forbes, the exchange recently filed for creditor protection in court because it now owes millions in cash and digital currencies due to the death of its CEO, Gerald Cotton.
The reported cause for the loss of the money was that Cotton passed away during December 2018 while on a trip in India, taking the recovery keys and passwords of the exchange’s cold storage wallet with him. As outlined in the court filing, the crypto inventory of Quadriga has become “unavailable” because the business laptop used by Cotton to transfer coins to cold storage was encrypted and he was the only one who knew the password and recovery key.
Reportedly, there were “diligent searches” of the keys but they were not found. Naturally, many users online suspect the “truth” behind these claims, with some even going as far as to question the death of the CEO after a Litecoin wallet that’s allegedly tied to exchange was discovered making transfers.