Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 More++

Once again, the main news around bitcoin in March was its price. At the start of the month we saw stories like:-

• 2019-03-01: Bitcoin's first monthly gain since July (fortune.com)

Remembering that the story was for the month of February, the full title was 'Bitcoin's First Monthly Gain Since July May Not Mean Too Much'. The month of March ended with reports like:-

• 2019-03-30: Bitcoin (BTC) Price Following Steady Uptrend, Dips Remain Attractive (newsbtc.com) • 'Yesterday, we saw a solid upside break above the $4,000 resistance in bitcoin price against the US Dollar.'

Similar stories started appearing mid-month in other publications, documenting the struggle for the price to stay above the symbolic $4000 level. Looking at the chart from the previous post on this blog, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 Price, we know that the struggle was ultimately successful.

If the stories around bitcoin were only about price, the subject in itself would not be especially interesting. We might as well be discussing the price of gold or house prices in Seattle (to pick a random city). Since there is much more to bitcoin than its price, let's look at some other stories. After price, the most frequent bitcoin story in March concerned Facebook. What was that about?

• 2019-02-28: Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed (nytimes.com; Nathaniel Popper and Mike Isaac) • 'Some of the world’s biggest internet messaging companies are hoping to succeed where cryptocurrency start-ups have failed by introducing mainstream consumers to the alternative world of digital coins. The internet outfits, including Facebook, Telegram and Signal, are planning to roll out new cryptocurrencies over the next year that are meant to allow users to send money to contacts on their messaging systems, like a Venmo or PayPal that can move across international borders. The most anticipated but secretive project is underway at Facebook.'
  
  
• 2019-03-07: Blow To Bitcoin As Mark Zuckerberg Warns Facebook Payments Are Coming (forbes.com; Billy Bambrough) • 'Bitcoin, which has recently attracted the attention of some of the world's biggest technology entrepreneurs, is likely to soon get a major competitor: Mark Zuckerberg's social networking giant Facebook. Facebook, which was last week revealed to be working on its own cryptocurrency to rival bitcoin for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging app, is trying to figure out how it can reposition itself in what Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called a "privacy-focused" future that will likely weigh on his company's bottom line.'

Great! That's just what Facebook users need: having the non-"privacy-focused" company tracking our spending habits. The bitcoin mantra 'anonymous' might be exaggerated, but Facebook is the opposite of anonymous.

I once wrote a post about Bitcoin Futures (December 2017). Note the date; it coincided with the peak of the bitcoin boom.

• 2019-03-18: Cboe to stop listing bitcoin futures as interest in crypto trading cools (cnbc.com) • 'The move by Cboe highlights cooling enthusiasm for bitcoin after an all-out mania led by retail investors in 2017.'
  
  
• 2019-03-19: A Big Step Backward for Bitcoin (foxbusiness.com) • 'Sixteen months. That's how long the first bitcoin futures product lasted.'

If the introduction of bitcoin futures signalled a market top, does the withdrawal of those futures signal a bottom? The contrarian in me says, 'Yes, of course!' Moving on -- and skipping the ever-present reports about bitcoin horrors, mainly involving criminal activity -- one more story caught my attention:-

• 2019-03-29: Canadian Oil Companies are [Somehow] Mining Bitcoin: the Next Big Trend? (newsbtc.com) • 'The operators of a large oil field in Canada are cashing out on the cryptocurrency phenomenon by using the wasted natural gas that results from mining petroleum to power a Bitcoin mining operation.'

The massive use of electricity to drive bitcoin mining at the expense of more productive uses of the same energy might be considered another horror. Using waste to mine the same bitcoin is a genuinely good idea that should have other applications. Does anyone have an idea how to use the mountains of plastic waste that threaten the planet?

Bitcoin in the News : 2019-03 Price

In last month's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-02 Price, I summarized the month's price chart with:-

The individual patterns are all similar: the market is in a state of equilibrium, then something happens -- always accompanied by significant volume -- to move it quickly to another state of equilibrium. The cycle repeats.

Although there were elements of that pattern in March, the chart was more like a steady ascent, punctuated by dips that corrected within a few days.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

Since there were no dramatic price jumps or drops during the month, let's look at the volumes. I count three periods of heavy volume (each bar covers six hours) and I'll include a fourth near the end of the month to give me one heavy period per week. They occurred at the following (approximate) times:-

2019-03-05 12:00 +
2019-03-16 00:00 +
2019-03-21 12:00 -
2019-03-29 06:00 +

As usual, Cointelegraph's Analysis category provided no insight. The site's Price Analysis tag had nothing special to say, concentrating more on moving averages and resistance / support levels. Several 'Price Analysis' reports mentioned the Bakkt 'institutional trading platform'. Although the name wasn't completely new to me, I haven't mentioned it on this blog. The Bakkt.com home page says,

Bakkt is building an open, seamless global network to enable you to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets simply, safely and efficiently. Backed by Intercontinental Exchange’s proven financial market infrastructure and technology, Bakkt’s secure global platform will connect investors, merchants and consumers, making it easier, faster and more cost-effective to access, trade and use digital assets.

The main entry on Wikipedia is under Intercontinental Exchange ('! : reads like a press release or a news article'), where we learn,

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is an American company that owns exchanges for financial and commodity markets, and operates 12 regulated exchanges and marketplaces. This includes ICE futures exchanges in the United States, Canada and Europe...

The section titled 'Bakkt' says,

In August 2018 Intercontinental Exchange announced that it planned to form a new company, Bakkt, which is intended to leverage Microsoft cloud solutions to create an open and regulated, global ecosystem for digital assets. The new company will work with a marquee group of organizations [...] to create an integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.

The Cointelegraph 'Price Analysis' reports implied that this will be a significant development in the evolution of crypto-currencies. I expect it will be heavily promoted when it's finally available.