Crypto Trade

BTC/USD has broken above $13,000 – already up some 11% on the day – and at the highest in over a year. At the time of writing, Bitcoin has reached a high of $13,296 and momentum looks robust.

The next levels to watch are $13,440, $15,530, and $17,160 before the all-time high just below $20,000.

All these lines of resistance either served as support or resistance lines back in the autumn of 2017 when Bitcoin prices were surging and in early 2018 when cryptocurrencies suffered a downfall.

The Relative Strength Index on the weekly chart is above 70 – reflecting overbought conditions – and implying a correction before the next move higher. Here is how the move and the next levels look on the Bitcoin weekly chart:






Here are additional targets as presented by Tomas Salles's latest analysis:

Above the current price, the first resistance level is at $14,000 (price congestion resistance), then the second at $17,090 (price congestion resistance) and the third one at $19,800 (historic high close). Above this price level, the BTC/USD pair will go up freely.

By CCN Markets: The bitcoin price rally refuses to let up, and the dominant cryptocurrency just soared above $11,000 for the first time since March 2018.

Bitcoin Price Rushes to 15-Month High

Around 12:00 UTC, investors bid the bitcoin price up to $11,215.89 on US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The move pushed the asset up by 13 percent for the day, launching its month-to-date gains above 30 percent. The past 24 hours also saw bitcoin’s “real 10” volume, which eliminates suspicious trades, swell to $2.58 billion.




Bitcoin Surges Past the $11,000 Level For the First Time in nearly 15 Months | Source: TradingView


Following the upside move, the bitcoin price is now trading just 45 percent lower than its all-time high near $20,000, established in December 2017. Furthermore, the cryptocurrency has recovered by 260 percent from its 2018 low of $3,126, including a year-to-date return of more than 200 percent.

Libra, Fed Rate Cut, & US-China Trade War Pump BTC

The bitcoin price started climbing higher on Wednesday soon after the Federal Reserve announced its plans to cut interest rates in July. As CCN reported, the Fed’s move left the US dollar in a weaker spot, sending the benchmark S&P 500 Index and especially the haven asset higher in the coming sessions.

Cryptocurrency analysts speculate that investors are looking at bitcoin as an alternative hedge, owing to the uncertainty over a trade dispute between the US and China.

Grayscale Investments stated in its new report that the ongoing tensions between the two economic superpowers left investors in China stranded with a weaker Chinese Yuan. In response, investors allegedly started hedging their capital into bitcoin. The report read:

“While it is still very early in Bitcoin’s life cycle as an investable asset, we have identified evidence supporting the notion that it can serve as a hedge in a global liquidity crisis, particularly those that result in subsequent currency devaluations.”

A part of bitcoin’s bullish sentiment also came in the form of Libra, better known as the Facebook cryptocurrency. Jasper Lawler of London Capital Group told CNN that the Facebook token would act as a gateway to the crypto market for its 2 billion users. The head of research added:

“Libra will expose 2 billion Facebook users to crypto. Because of its huge network of over 2 billion users, Facebook products cast a wide net. Libra will breed familiarity of cryptos to a much wider audience. Two billion people will now be much more open to Bitcoin and other altcoins.”

BTC at Risk of Reversal

BTC’s latest push to the upside has brought it closer to the wedge breakout area, as CCN discussed in previous analysis.




Bitcoin Close to Testing Falling Wedge Breakout Area | Source: TradingViewThere is a significant possibility of a reversal once bitcoin tests the $11,238-$11,779 area, the top of the falling wedge depicted in red, according to the daily RSI indicator, which is overbought.

A pullback, therefore, could push bitcoin towards the support area above $9,948. On the other hand, a break above the $11,238-$11,779 area could have bitcoin test $12,972 as interim upside target.

IF FACEBOOK’S PIVOT from town square to private living room wasn’t laden with enough irony, here’s a new twist: Big business, it appears, has been invited to join us by the fireplace.

GREGORY BARBER COVERS CRYPTOCURRENCY, BLOCKCHAIN, AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR WIRED.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journalreported new potential details about Facebook’s long-awaited cryptocurrency plans. The company is reportedly seeking dozens of business partners, including online merchants and financial firms, in an effort to extend the reach of its blockchain-based marketplace.

Facebook’s would-be partners are being asked to pitch into an investment fund, valued at $1 billion or more, that would serve as backing for Facebook’s coin and mitigate the wild speculative swings that make cryptocurrencies like bitcoin hard to spend.

The pitch, according to the Journal, involves offering merchants lower fees than credit cards.Some were quick to note that this would reduce Facebook’s ability to make money from payments in the short term. But that may not matter much—if, in the end, Facebook’s crypto effort is really all about getting you to spend more time glued to Facebook.

Facebook appears to be already building out the plumbing to make its marketplace a reality. At its F8 developer conference this week, the word “blockchain” was notably absent. But even as Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s plan to reorganize your Facebook experience around intimate relationships, his update included plenty of ways money would be involved.

“I believe that it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo,” he said, alluding to “simple and secure payments” as a core feature of his privacy-forward vision. That apparently extends beyond the peer-to-peer payments available on Venmo and Facebook’s own Messenger app.

In a series of keynotes, Facebook execs touted a litany of commerce-focused improvements: better checkout for Instagram’s digital mall, donation stickers, and a new tool for small business owners to list items on WhatsApp.

Indeed, WhatsApp appears to sit at the center of Facebook’s commerce efforts—at least to start. At F8, Facebook said WhatsApp Pay, currently on limited trial in India, would expand to additional, unnamed countries later this year.

The platform isn’t blockchain-based (for now) and is designed for peer-to-peer payments. But with 80 percent of small businesses in India using WhatsApp to market their goods, some form of payments processing is a natural evolution.

 In December, Bloomberg reported that the first tests of the crypto coin may occur in India, initially as a way for workers to send money home from overseas.

An added twist from the Journal’s report is the possibility that the coin will be integrated into Facebook’s lucrative ads ecosystem. The scheme, reportedly still under debate within Facebook, would potentially work on both sides of the ads equation: Merchants could use the coins to pay for ads, and users would be rewarded in coins for viewing or interacting with them.

That reflects a growing perception—seen recently in efforts like the Brave browser, which compensates users through a token for clicking on ads—that people should get paid for their attention, not simply help internet giants make money.

For Facebook, it also presents a vision of how its ads and eyeballs-driven business could continue in the company’s supposedly privacy-first era. The idea is to keep Facebook’s coins—and therefore users—tightly enmeshed in the platform.

THE WIRED GUIDE TO THE BLOCKCHAIN

“I don’t believe they’re doing anything that isn’t in the service of increasing interactions on their platforms,” says Joshua Gans, a professor at the University of Toronto. Sending money to businesses presents a challenge, he notes. Compared with friends and family, businesses are more likely to dump their Facebook coins at the end of the month in favor of real money.

Gans is skeptical that Facebook would pay users for viewing ads—an immensely tricky system to create—unless it involved something like a rebate for buying a product through a Facebook advertisement. On the merchant side, encouraging businesses to pay for ads and services on Facebook with the coin could be one way of staunching the flow of money out of the system.

As the Journal notes, Facebook’s foray into blockchain could look a bit like a loyalty-points system—tokens that can be earned through and spent on Facebook services, or cashed out elsewhere though partner merchants. That’s not without precedent among technology companies: Uber, for example, has Uber Cash, which rewards users for purchases both in and out of Uber with app-specific money.

Gans notes offerings like the Apple Card hold a similar purpose: It’s a service that, for all the talk of disrupting the credit card industry, is mostly a shiny, heavy way to buy more of Apple’s apps and products.A Facebook spokesperson reiterated an earlier comment: “Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology.

 This new small team is exploring many different applications.”Facebook still faces many challenges, from sorting out how it will oversee the system to assuaging the privacy concerns of users to determining how to funnel money in and out of its currency—a process that, for other cryptocurrencies, is typically handled by exchanges.

It also has to contend with the realities of the global economic system, which runs on euros and yen as well as dollars. Even if it backs the currency with a basket of currencies, as reported, it “can’t be stable with every currency in the world,” says Gans. “That’s not how the world works.

” Hence the need to enlist financial partners to smooth transactions in and out of Facebook’s system.

Bottom line: It’s very unclear how this will work in practice. “There are a lot of moving parts. Facebook doesn’t always do what we expect,” says Gans.

Sam Ouimet   

Bitcoin traded in a range of just under $1,500 over the course of the month of September, its narrowest monthly trading range since July 2017, data reveals.

At close of trading Sunday, bitcoin (BTC) officially ended the 30-day period with a trading range of $1,329, with prices oscillating between a low of $6,100 and a high of $7,429.

Overall, this was the lowest one-month range since July 2017, when bitcoin traded in a $1,095.8 window, according to data from Bitfinex.Further, the monthly trading volume throughout September marked its lowest amount since April 2017, according to the exchange, one of the world's largest.

Periods of low volatility often come to a boisterous end for bitcoin especially when accompanied by low volume, so it seems the cryptocurrency is gearing up for a decisive move in either direction.

Monthly Chart

Bitcoin concluded its September candlestick inside the low and high of the prior month's candlestick, creating a pattern known as the "inside bar pattern." In trending markets, the pattern can present strong buy or sell signals if current prices surpass the range of the prior month.

Since the market for bitcoin has been in a bearish downtrend since December of 2017, current prices falling below the low of September ($6,100) would likely confirm more downside action is to come and set scope for prior support/resistance level near $4,900.

On the other hand, if September's range high is surpassed ($7,429), it would be a bullish indication for longer-term upside potential and possible bull market revival.

20-Month Moving Average

The current bear market draws many parallels to that of bitcoin's bear market in 2014-15.Notably, the current bear market just began its 11th month, while prices now sitting on the 20-month moving average (MA) for support. The timing is rather impeccable when compared to the 2014 market since its 11th month also rested on the 20-month MA.

This would suggest a decisive move could be incoming since falling below the MA in the 12th month of the 2014 bear market further cemented the trend in bearish favor, of which it was unable to escape until returning above the MA in November of 2015.

View

• This will be a decisive month for bitcoin as the low volatility suggests a big move is coming in either direction.
• Falling below September's low of $6,100 opens the door to prior support/resistance level near $4,900, while rising above Septembers high could signal a bull market revival.
• Falling below the 20-month MA would likely confirm several more months of the bear market are ahead.

Disclosure: The author holds BTC, AST, REQ, OMG, FUEL, 1st and AMP at the time of writing.

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The game isn’t over for Bitcoin yet. And neither is its price volatility, which divides cryptocurrency experts on where bitcoin price is heading next. On one side is the bullish camp, which argues that Bitcoin is still in an uptrend, betting that it will eventually reach $30,000.

Marshall Taplits, Chief Strategy Officer for NYNJA, is one of them. “Speculation on price is always difficult, says Taplits. “However, the trend for Bitcoin is clear - UP, going to about $20,000 USD from zero in 10 years.  Each time Bitcoin corrects, the media wrenches.  However, anyone who has been watching crypto currency since the beginning knows to bet on $30,000.


Daniel Worsley Chief Operating Officer of Local CoinSwap is another Bitcoin bull. “There is no other network that has been as battle tested as the Bitcoin blockchain,” says Worsley.  


“It has resisted serious adversaries, and coordinated attacks designed to disrupt its functioning. It has survived all assaults. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the price above $20,000 USD this year. Especially given the amount of negative press which is now priced in, and investor expectation of another bull run, it will only take a couple of positive developments to set off the train.”


On the other side is the bearish camp, which argues that Bitcoin is a mania that sooner or later will come to an end, the way every mania ends: falling demand in the face of rising supply (in this case from competing coins). And when these conditions are met, Bitcoin prices could be driven back to $1000.

That’s according to some estimates which set the fundamental value of Bitcoin at $1,142.Still, it may take quite some time before the price of Bitcoin reaches its fundamental value, even in a rational world.

“Rationality of behavior and expectations is not enough to prevent bubbles, as it is not enough to guarantee that the price of an asset is equal to its fundamental value,” explains Christos Giannikos, Professor of Finance at Baruch College....continue reading page 2 of this article here on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/04/08/wheres-bitcoin-price-heading-next-1k-or-3...