We’re at the middle of the week with the price of Bitcoin back at where it was two days ago. Like we talked about in our last update, the price remained around the $1,210 level until a new buying wave that this week’s geopolitical events likely triggered pushed it up by $20. However, current market signals suggest that the trends are changing.
According to Business Insider, the price push is likely the result of political tensions between the United States, Korea, and the Middle East. Namely, this week’s White House press conference brought news of the US being open to more bomb strikes in Syria, while reports from North Korea spoke of a nuclear threat from the local government should the U.S. Navy provoke the country.
Worries about the outcome of both events have directly reflected on the trade of risk and safe-haven assets. According to the BI report, there was a “steep” sale of risk assets like U.S. stocks, while safe haven-assets like gold have spiked up, along with Bitcoin, which was one of the few assets which held on to its gains.
Price Drops as Sellers Take Over
During the past 48 hours since our last update, the price of Bitcoin fluctuated mildly by $20 +/- as the trading trends changed from one day to the next. The highest point was hit yesterday evening, when the price reached $1228.41, while the lowest point of $1201.93 was reached during morning hours.
As the price swung, the trading volume remained fairly consistent. It is now at $215,711,000, while the market cap moved up to $19.5 billion. However, volume has been on the increase since morning, hinting that there might be some more price changes coming soon.
Our technical analysis suggests the trading market is mostly pro-sell, as 6 out of 12 moving averages and 8 out of 12 oscillators are sending a selling signal. However, the SMA 100 is still over the SMA 200, so there’s less resistance to the upside and the RSI is hitting “oversold”, which suggests that sellers might be getting tired soon.
The overall conclusion is that the price is headed for a slower correction if the selling wave continues. If not, we’ll likely see it stay within the $1,210-1,220 range.
Bitcoin Mining = a Billion Dollar Business?
In other interesting news, new reports on the business of Bitcoin mining have surfaced online that paint a clearer picture of how lucrative the mining business actually is. The Cambridge Alternative Finance Centre had posted a report on the estimated profit of the Bitcoin mining industry since 2008 onwards that suggests that miners have made around $2 billion in revenue since the said period, the Quartz reveals.
Bitcoin mining has come a long way since the early days when even home desktops could be used to solve blocks and receive their batch of the cryptocurrency as reward. But thanks to the high prizes which change every fourth year, the competition has increased and is now impossible to mine the cryptocurrency from your home as you need to invest in massive amounts of gear and compete with other miners for the chance to do so.
The current reward for solving a block is 12.5 BTC, or around $15,000, which has helped the industry amass $2 billion in rewards from solving blocks but also receiving back fees from people who pay for the processing of their transactions. However, the interesting thing to note here is that his estimate does not include any profits made of setting up cloud mining services or even selling mining equipment.