11 May 2019

Bitcoin in the News : 2019-04 More++

In last week's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-04 Price, I wrote,
You might have to look twice to see the jump at the beginning of the month, which is partially hidden by the price numbers to the left of the chart. The jump is confirmed by the volumes. After going from 4000 to 5000 (in round numbers) in a few days, the price levelled off and continued in a gentle, upward trend.

What do other news sources say about the jump? The first story I looked at, Bitcoin Price Surges Past 5,000 to Highest Level Since November, was noncommittal:-

Traders struggled to pinpoint reasons for the rally, though some noted a flood fresh interest after Bitcoin breached the $4,200 level. The cryptocurrency briefly topped $5,000 and the value of digital assets tracked by CoinMarketCap.com jumped by about $17 billion in less than an hour.

Sudden swings in Bitcoin are nothing new, but price action had been relatively subdued this year as investors weighed the prospects for mainstream adoption after last year’s 74 percent crash. Market participants say big buy orders in Bitcoin can often lead to outsized moves, in part because volume is spread across dozens of venues. Trend-following individual investors and short covering can also exacerbate volatility.

Discussion of the jump was a recurring theme throughout the month and pushed other crypto-currency topics into the background. To get a handle on the consequences, I fell back on a technique that I used last year (see Bitcoin in the News : 2018-11 More++) in opposite circumstances.

How to explain the drops? In separate 'Bitcoin in the News' posts a few months ago I highlighted two mainstream financial news services [CNBC & Forbes] by showing which stories had been published by the two news services. Let's do the same for November, comparing the stories from both services with the goal of understanding the November price movements. Of course, this isn't a comprehensive look at all of their stories -- it's a list of stories that were flagged by Google News, using whatever its criteria are.

This month, I'll use Forbes again. It has stories from both cheerleaders and gloom-&-doomers, with the central objectivists also represented.

Many of the titles are self-explanatory, but I've added a comment for those that aren't. Three other stories that have nothing to do with the jump are worth mentioning.

  • 2019-04-13: Millions Stolen in Attack on Electrum Bitcoin Wallet Service (crowdfundinsider.com) • 'Hackers have launched a 140 000-machine botnet DoS attack against servers hosting popular Bitcoin wallet service Electrum'

  • 2019-04-19: How Mueller used Bitcoin to catch Russia (cnn.com) • 'Russian operatives used cryptocurrency at almost every stage in their online efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report on his investigation.'

  • 2019-04-27: Bitcoin Price Reaction to Tether Fiasco May Signal Strong Fundamental Strength (newsbtc.com) • 'Bitfinex sent a whopping $850 million to a company based in Panama that resulted in the exchange losing access to these funds. In response to this, Bitfinex granted itself access to a significant amount of Tether’s cash reserves that are supposed to be used to maintain USDT’s 1:1 USD backing.'

This isn't the first time we've seen Tether associated negatively with bitcoin price moves. Use the search box for previous posts on this blog.

By at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)