After dropping down below $1,000 for the first time in weeks last weekend, the price of Bitcoin climbed back near $1,100 while the trading market still remains pro-sell. With talks of the “hard fork” becoming more and more frequent and the market cap turning down to where it was at the beginning of February, it seems that the confidence in Bitcoin gained during the past month has lost some if its force.
But as we reported a week ago, while Bitcoin is losing some of its momentum other cryptocurrencies are continuing to grow, especially after last Friday when the first reports about the Bitcoin Unlimited project coming closer to realization started popping up around the web. The rising trend began after the SEC announced their decision and has been further boosted by talks of the Bitcoin split.
Ethereum was the biggest grower, as prior to last week it traded for around $20 per coin for a long time, but has since moved to the current $40 mark, at one time even touching $50. Another currency Dash has also nearly doubled, and now trades near $100, while Monero has finally reached an all-time high of $20+. It looks as though some traders are transferring their funds in alternative currencies.
Bitcoin Going Down
Just after it started going back up yesterday, Bitcoin is now being pushed downwards by sellers and the price is testing the $1,050 range. The highest point since our last update was hit yesterday evening, when one Bitcoin traded for $1126.29, while the lowest point of $1067.72 was today.
The trading volume remains virtually unchanged at $311,889,000, while the market cap is still down, at $17.5 billion. However, there is still enough volume to push the price down faster, so keep a close watch on the market.
Our technical analysis shows a clear direction, as the overall long-term trends are pro-sell, with 7 out of 12 moving averages and 11 oscillators sending a sell signal and short-term charts showing a similar picture. The SMA 100 is still over the SMA 200 on this time-frame, but the gap is narrowing.
Our analysis shows that the price is headed for correction, unless the trends don’t change soon. If it breaks below $1,000, we’ll likely see a further rollback. On the other hand, if buyers return, they should keep the price afloat and near $1,110.
Split Talks Fuel Fears
The proposed change to the Blockchain’s block size to increase the number of transactions per second has been in the talks for over two-years, but it was only after last week that one side decided to group up and do it, instead of arguing indefinitely about it.
Of course, their mission fired up social media and now the bitcoin world has split in two fractions while the main concern remains that if split, Bitcoin’s network could become an oligopoly, where control and distribution will be dispersed between several big players.
Andrew Desantis, Bitcoin developer, started tweeting heavily about the change saying that the cryptocurrency world is nearing the “death” of Bitcoin, according to Forbes, while chief supporters of Bitcoin unlimited, Roger Var (or “Bitcoin Jesus”, if you will) shunned off the criticism as conspiracy theories and Jihan Wu, Bitmain co-founder, said no such plans existed.
At the same time, some of the largest Bitcoin marketplaces, Kraken and BitStamp, posted their emergency plans that said, should a hard fork occurs, they will give their users an option to trade both traditional Bitcoins and any alternative version that might emerge.