BTC price is still struggling to move back upwards after fears of Bitcoin splitting triggered high trading volumes by the end of Friday and a general selling mood that took Bitcoin’s value down for approximately $100. But today things are looking somewhat more positive, although not enough to guarantee the downtrend is really over.
In other news, Forbes did a comparison of Bitcoin and gold in which they’ve discussed the behavior of both assets. Forbes analyst, Olivier, speaks of Bitcoin’s volatility as one of the key discerning features between both assets and gives a different reason for why users are choosing Bitcoin instead of gold that has little to do with building an investment portfolio.
According to the article, Bitcoin has always thrived when “monetary folly” was being conducted by governments, which is why Olivier sees Bitcoin more like a fear meter for the public’s belief in fiat currencies, with the second most cited reason for owning Bitcoin is that people don’t want governments to control their money.
Buyers Return to Market
After moving closely to $1,000 for a day, during the weekend the price of Bitcoin took a plunge below this level for the first time in a month. The lowest point was hit on Saturday morning, when a brief volatile drop took the price down to $897.71, while the highest point of $1003.27 was reached yesterday evening.
Saturday morning was also when the trading volume hit its highest peak of $556 million, something we’ve been seeing quite enough in the past week. The volume subdued on Sunday, but is again on the rise today and currently at $301,326,000, while the market cap is at $16 billion. Higher volumes mean more room for bigger price corrections, so keep your eyes peeled for any swings.
Our 1-hour time charts show that buyers are picking up speed, as there are 10 out of 12 moving averages and 7 out of 12 oscillators showing a buying trend. However, the SMA 100 is below the SMA 200 on this time-frame, so there is less resistance to the downside and the RSI and Williams %R are also signaling overbought conditions, so don’t get your hopes up to soon.
The long-term signals, on the other hand, show the market is split between buyers and sellers. From the current stance, the price seems headed for a further increase to the $1,000 range, as long as sellers don’t return. If they do, we are likelier to see a break towards $950.
Bitcoin Unlimited – What’s the Alternative?
The debates about Bitcoin’s future course are still ongoing in the Bitcoin community, and while most are focusing on Bitcoin unlimited – the project to increase Bitcoin’s block size – the time is right to speak of the alternative – SegWit (Segregated Witness), which is another popular solution, albeit one with less support, for now.
While Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) would give miners the voting power on increasing Bitcoin’s block size when needed, it would also give them the power to impose transaction fees to compensate them for handling the processing. But on the other hand, SegWit is a proposal that would keep the currency (more) decentralized, instead of giving miners most of the control.
Namely, SegWit would double the transactions per second (that’s the final limit) by slimming out some of the data from each transaction, like the signatures, while also possibly moving some of them off the chain. However, before a decision can be made to deploy the project, developers are asking for 95% support from the community, while so far they have only 30% as opposed to BU’s 70%.