11 April 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-03 More++

The dramatic drop in the price of bitcoin that I documented in the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2020-03 Price, was a continuation of a trend set in the previous month. I documented that trend in a pair of 'Bitcoin in the News' posts, 2020-02 Price (March 2020) and 2020-02 More++ (ditto). The last link in the '2020-02 More++' post had a provocative title, Remember When Bitcoin Was Supposed To Be Good As Gold? It Isn’t (forbes.com). The article started,
Remember when Bitcoin was supposed to be digital gold? That’s what guys at Goldman Sachs were saying for at least two years. The theory: Bitcoin would behave as a safe haven asset, a digital one, in times of trouble. When the recession comes, everyone will want one.'

As the price slump continued into March, that theme was repeated many times. Some analysts came to the same 'safe haven' conclusion. Others came to the opposite conclusion. Here are a half dozen 'bitcoin vs. gold' articles flagged by Google News in March. Unlike the Forbes.com article, these were all from services specializing in crypto currencies:-

Half of those references are to Cointelegraph.com articles. While I was preparing this present post, Cointelegraph kept playing an embedded video:-

That's the same Anthony Pompliano (aka 'Pomp') mentioned in the article titled 'Bitcoin & Gold "Are Doing the Same Thing"'. I'm not much interested in bitcoin cheerleaders, but at times he makes some good points. At other times he's talking through his cap.

Has Anthony Pompliano ever debated Peter 'Only Fools are Choosing Bitcoin' Schiff? Given that bitcoin has no intrinsic value, maybe 'digital gold' is a euphemism for 'fools gold'.

04 April 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-03 Price

Recapping the price analysis in Bitcoin in the News : 2020-02 Price,
In January, the price was up, up, and away. [In February], that trend continued until mid-month, then reversed direction.

In March, the downtrend continued. From a peak of US$ 9000, the bitcoin price fell to US$ 5000, before recovering to US$ 6000.


Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

Comparing the '2020-02 Price' chart, note the loss of most price sources in the current chart. They were restored sometime after I took the snapshot. Although there were a half-dozen instances of high volume, for this post I'll concentrate on a one week period covering the slide from US$ 9000 to 5000:-

2020-03-07 16:00 peak for month
2020-03-12 00:00 start of slide
2020-03-13 00:00 end of slide

I found two relevant stories in Cointelegraph's Analysis category. Both attributed the decline to the general panic in worldwide markets:-

  • 2020-03-14: Bitcoin Price Correlates With Traditional Assets, but Not Entirely • 'Following the World Health Organization's recent declaration of the novel coronavirus pandemic on March 11 with the independent research body citing 118,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths globally this rosy picture seems to have reversed almost overnight. Additionally, ever since news of the medical emergency went live, markets all over the world began to crash at an unprecedented rate, with powerhouse economies such as Australia and India already gearing up for a period of heavy recession.'

  • 2020-03-14: BTC Plunge, YouTube Ban & Other Challenges: Bad Crypto News of the Week • 'Bitcoin has been on a downward streak for the last week, down around 15 percent over the last seven days. That's bad but it could be worse. You might have put your money in stocks. Some people, though, remain optimistic.'

The theory of bitcoin as a 'safe haven' was thereby thoroughly debunked. That second story, 'Bad Crypto News of the Week', is an ongoing theme. I noted three other stories on the same theme over the past month (or so):-

Finally, here are the relevant stories from Cointelegraph's Price Analysis tag. The quotes are from the tag's index page:-

Each of those stories starts with 4-5 paragraphs of analysis relating the crypto market to global trends. Examples (the italics are mine):-

2020-03-06: 'Roughly 42% of the total Bitcoin supply has not moved in the past two years. This shows that the investors are holding on to their Bitcoin as they expect the price to rally further.'

2020-03-09: 'Although Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped about 26% from its highs, it is still up about 7% year-to-date. This shows that it is outperforming both equity and oil markets.'

2020-03-12: 'Volatility has spiked to levels not seen since the last financial crisis. This shows that fear has gripped the traders and they are likely to sell everything at hand. Even gold sold off today.'

All of those trends probably lasted no longer than the time it took to write the analysis. 'This shows that' fuzzy thinking is the norm for bitcoin believers.