As the Christmas holiday came to a close and the business week started picking up steam, Bitcoin’s price saw a reversal back towards former highs, short after suffering one of the most notable price crashes this year. Currently, the price is back over the $16,000 range – a vast improvement over weekend prices – while the market is being heavily pressed by buyers.
Naturally, there has been plenty of speculation as to what caused the price plunge. The most logical theory was that short-term speculators were pulling from the market due to a wide-spread case of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). What started most probably as an initial selling wave by early traders looking to cash in has led to a larger sell-off as other short-term investors made emotional decisions to sell off before the “bubble” bursts.
According to the BBC, due to the high weekend volumes three Bitcoin exchanges experienced problems and had to stop trading completely. Coinbase – being one of the most densely populated trading markets – had to stop its services twice, while other two exchanges in the US, CBOE and CME, also stopped their Bitcoin futures trading temporarily.
Bulls Lead the Way
Just like we discussed last Wednesday, the bearish sentiment and high market volume forced the price to go through a strong correction, which started forming on Thursday and escalated the following day. The lowest price point was touched on Friday afternoon, when Bitcoin dropped to $11,833.00, while the peak of $16,911.20 was hit this early morning.
The high trading volume we noted during our last update continued through the price drop but has since subsided back to normal levels. The trading volume is now sitting at $12.6 billion and slowly rising, while the market cap is at $279 billion.
Our technical analysis shows that the market is in a major buying mood, with all 12 moving averages and 8 out of 12 oscillators sending a buying signal. The SMA 100 is still over the SMA 200, indicating there’s less resistance to the upside. A similar conclusion can be reached from the short-term signals, and even though RSI and Williams are both showing a bullish reversal pattern, the overall trend seems to be in favor of further price growths.
Bitcoin Jobs on a Rise Too
This week also put the spotlight on the formation of another interesting trend – a rise in Bitcoin-related jobs. According to Fortune, with the rise of Bitcoin’s price in 2017, job post on Linkedin with Bitcoin in the headline also grew by an incredible 5,753% ending mid-November, with a total number of job posts posted during the 11-month period growing to 4,917. Unbelievably, the increase in Bitcoin-related jobs even surpassed Bitcoin’s price increase of 3,151% during the said period.
Another job posting aggregator, ZipRecruiter.com, saw a direct correlation between the growth of Bitcoin’s price and the number of cryptocurrency jobs. What’s interesting to note in their statistics is that the number of job posts took a plunge in July 2017 at the same time when Bitcoin saw a price correction after calls of a “bubble” started spreading online. The same stats show the number of job posts growing as Bitcoin’s price continued to move upwards.
However, Fortune agrees that just because the number of cryptocurrency jobs is growing it doesn’t necessarily mean they are all related to Bitcoin. Namely, a large number of these posts sought people with experience in blockchain and cryptocurrencies in general and not just Bitcoin. Nevertheless, the trends are indicative of the future that might be lying in this sector.