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.

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14 March 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-02 More++

In last week's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2020-02 Price, I wrote,
I picked out four high volume periods worth investigating. Two were from the first, rising half of the month, two from the second, falling half.

For this post, I'll combine those four high volume periods with all of the February stories that I identified from Forbes. The stories through the day after a high volume period are grouped together.

05-Feb-20 16:00 +

11-Feb-20 16:00 +

19-Feb-20 20:00 -

26-Feb-20 16:00 -

All of the groups, except the third, have a story covering the high volume period. The story dated 2020-02-27 in the last group says,

Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market crash comes as global stocks go into meltdown due to the coronavirus spreading around the world.

It relates to two coronavirus stories in the first group (which are positive for bitcoin) plus the last story in the fourth group (negative for bitcoin). The month of March should provide more evidence supporting one side of this difference of opinion.

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07 March 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-02 Price

In last month's price post, Bitcoin in the News : 2020-01 Price, I wrote
In January, the price was up, up, and away.

As Cointelegraph's February price chart shows, that trend continued until mid-month, then reversed direction.


Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

I picked out four high volume periods worth investigating. Two were from the first, rising half of the month, two from the second, falling half:-

05-Feb-20 16:00 +
11-Feb-20 16:00 +
19-Feb-20 20:00 -
26-Feb-20 16:00 -

Cointelegraph's Analysis category flagged nothing significant to account for those periods of interest, so I turned to the service's Price Analysis tag. As usual, the discussions were based on technical analysis.

In retrospect, that looks like happy talk. Aren't the bulls and the bears all reading the same charts?

The word 'correction' implies a general uptrend. What happens when a 'correction' becomes 'capitulation'? In the case of bitcoin, everyone might simply walk away.

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15 February 2020

Highest Market Caps

An extra Saturday this month gave me the chance to tackle something other than the two news posts for a typical month. I decided to redo some of the widgets in the right navigation bar.

I created the single news feed in the early days of this blog -- documented in the post Market Resources (August 2015) -- and haven't touched it since, although in the years since then the symbol BTCS has evolved and been assigned to different companies. Using both 'bitcoin' and 'blockchain' as the basis for a Yahoo search, I couldn't find a good symbol to replace it. The most relevant Yahoo page...

...didn't lend itself to a feed, so I added it as a resource link. Another possibility was...

...but the 'Screener' link also had market cap plus a lot more data. I took the top-3 market caps and developed an RSS feed...

to generate news stories on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. This replaced the BTCS feed I used previously.

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08 February 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-01 More++

While I was preparing the previous post Bitcoin in the News : 2020-01 Price, I collected links to a number of Cointelegraph articles summarizing key trends in 2019. There were eleven:-

Looking at other stories from January, the two most interesting were also from Cointelegraph:-

My first reaction to this was 'So what?'. Why should having Bitcoin (BTC) keys make Bitcoin SV (BSV) more valuable? Why should not having the BTC keys make BSV less valuable?

The first story ('Prices Soar') ended, 'With the day’s gains approaching 100%, this has some calling Wright’s tactics a straight-up exit scam.' Then it dawned on me: the larger the capitalization for a cryptocurrency, the more interest it will attract. The more interest it attracts, the more money will flow into the coin, thereby driving prices further. This is entirely in line with the assumption that a coin's price is mainly driven by psychological factors.

Other than the steady rise in price, January was a light month for additional bitcoin news. One more story, more forward looking than the others, is worth mentioning:-

  • 2020-01-19: 5 Major Bitcoin Trends To Watch In 2020
    - Bitcoin Halving 2020 [May]
    - Bitcoin’s Transition to Digital Gold
    - Schnorr, Taproot, and Tapscript ['all expected to be included in the same soft-forking upgrade of the Bitcoin network']
    - Lightning Network and Liquid Sidechain Adoption
    - Institutional Money

There is some jargon in that last story that should be investigated. I'll do that another time.

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01 February 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2020-01 Price

You know the routine. First, recap last month's price post, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-12 Price:-
The November chart was the fourth out of five in the second half of the year to show a falling trend. • The December chart shows neither a rising nor a falling trend. It was basically flat.

Then show the Cointelegraph chart from last month. In January, the price was up, up, and away.


Bitcoin (BTC) Price Index

Then flag any volumes that stand head-and-shoulders above the others:-

2020-01-08 0000 (cluster peak)
2020-01-14 1600 (cluster peak)
2020-01-30 1600 (small jump)

Because they don't correspond to any sharp change in the price, none of those were typical of recent months. The first two, labelled 'cluster peak', occurred at the end of a multi-day rise in price. The last, 'small jump', occurred in a plateau. Along with the monthly routine being broken, the Cointelegraph Analysis category flagged a couple of longer term trends.

  • 2020-01-14: Crypto Community Eyes US–Iran Crisis As Tensions Flare • 'For one week, the Iran–United States military crisis gripped the crypto community. It began on Jan. 3 with a U.S. drone strike on a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The price of Bitcoin (BTC) soared.'

  • 2020-01-21: CME's Futures Options Sprinted Out of the Gate but a Marathon Lies Ahead • 'In the two years since it launched cash-settled Bitcoin futures, CME [Chicago Mercantile Exchange] has firmly established itself as a leader in the regulated crypto derivatives space despite not always being the first to market. In December 2017, it launched regulated Bitcoin futures a week after rival exchange CBOE [Chicago Board Options Exchange]. However, it only took 15 months for CBOE to completely withdraw from the market. By August, CME had announced record highs for Bitcoin futures trading. Most recently, Bakkt came into the market ahead of CME with its regulated options on Bitcoin futures. However, after successfully launching its own options contracts on Jan. 13, it seems that the Chicago-based CME is once again emerging at the top of its game.'

A few posts in Cointelegraph's Price Analysis tag confirmed both trends.

  • 2020-01-08: Price Analysis Jan 8: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC, EOS, BNB, BSV, XMR, ADA • 'The crypto markets continue to respond to the events happening in the United States-Iran conflict. Any sign of escalating tensions is boosting the crypto markets higher. Google Trends shows that the searches for terms “Bitcoin” and “Bitcoin Iran” have surged in the past few days. This shows that investors are considering Bitcoin as a safe haven asset, similar to gold.'

  • 2020-01-15: Price Analysis Jan 15: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, BSV, LTC, EOS, BNB, TRX, XMR • 'The crypto space is making a comeback and the rally is being led by altcoins. While several altcoins might participate in the initial rally, we believe that the market will start differentiating between each cryptocurrency based on its fundamentals [?]. Hence, traders should avoid buying the non-performers expecting a repeat of the previous bull market when every altcoin staged a parabolic rally.'

  • 2020-01-31: Price Analysis Jan 31: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, BSV, LTC, EOS, BNB, ADA, ETC • 'The growing popularity of crypto derivatives indicates institutional players are gradually entering the space. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange group Managing Director and Global Head of Equity Index Alternative Investment Products, Tim McCourt, said: “CME Bitcoin futures have surpassed $100 billion in total notional value [?] traded since their launch in December 2017.”'

The words marked '[?]' require further research. (1) Given that prices are primarily driven by psychology, what are 'altcoin fundamentals'? (2) What is the measure of 'notional value'? I'll take that up some other time.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but the ten coins listed in each 'Price Analysis' title are ordered by total market value at the time of the post. The changes from post to post might be worth analyzing. Ditto for the exchanges (currently five) listed near the top of my monthly price chart.

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11 January 2020

Bitcoin in the News : 2019-12 More++

For the third year straight -- see Bitcoin in the News : 2018-12 More++ for the previous edition -- I'll summarize all of last year's monthly price charts in a single chart.

As I've already noted in several previous posts, the first half of the year showed a rising trend, the second half of the year a falling trend. The two previous years followed a similar pattern for longer periods: 2017 rising [the great bull market], 2018 falling [the great bear market]. The trend is your friend? December [2019-12] was flat.

In last week's post, Bitcoin in the News : 2019-12 Price, I wrote,

I'll come back to [those high-volume periods] when I look at other news sources in next week's '2019-12 More++' post.

***

Later: After updating that post, I was left with a few more December stories worth noting -- all of them somehow negative. For example, two involved Ponzi schemes:-

  • 2019-12-11: Cryptocurrency rocked by massive Bitcoin fraud (yahoo.com) • 'US prosecutors have arrested three men while investigating an alleged $722 million Bitcoin scam. The Justice Department has branded the activities of the 'BitClub Network' as a 'high-tech Ponzi scheme' that lured victims with fake Bitcoin mining profits while taking money from investors who were rewarded for recruiting new members.'

  • 2019-12-19: That $2B Ponzi scheme caught dumping Bitcoin just moved its $105M Ether stash (thenextweb.com) • 'Just days after cryptocurrency analysts suggested that a $2 billion Chinese Ponzi scheme was stifling Bitcoin‘s price, its enormous Ethereum stash is on the move. [...] Earlier this week, Hard Fork reported that the PlusToken Ponzi scheme had sought to liquidate $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency swindled from unsuspecting investors.'

That second story is badly written and incoherent, but might be worth keeping in mind. The next story, from a veteran bitcoin analyst, is better written.

  • 2019-12-21: A U.S. Fed Official Made A 'Significant' Bitcoin Warning (forbes.com) • Lael Brainard, Federal Reserve governor;'One study estimated that more than a quarter of bitcoin users and roughly half of bitcoin transactions, for example, are associated with illegal activity.'

I keep coming back to the same question: Why would an honest person want to mingle with the type of people involved in crypto currencies?

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