As the decade draws to a close, it's time to look at the investments that were the most successful. And, unsurprisingly, cryptocurrencies top the list of the most profitable investments of the decade.

Up first, is Bitcoin. The first cryptocurrency, built by an anonymous programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto, it led to the creation of many Bitcoin forksalternative versions running on similar codeand thousands of altcoins, either using the same code or trying out new features. But, if you got in early, you had the chance to make a quick buck.

Since the first bitcoin was available for trading, its price has accelerated 62,500 percent. Outshining many traditional stocks, it even spawned an entire culture built around prices "mooning" and the promise of lovingly labelled "lambos." Due to the extreme rise, many critics have called it a Ponzi Scheme and say that its price pumps are bubbles that keep popping. But despite the criticism, an entire industry has been built around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, leading many countries around the world to start adoption blockchain technology.

Much of the promise of blockchain technology can be seen with Ethereum. It offers features known as smart contracts, which allow for the creation of decentralized apps. These have interesting applications, particularly in the world of finance.

The price of Ethereum has shot up too. Even though the price has dropped heavily since its all-time high in January 2018, the price of Ethereum is still up by 17,900 percent. One ETH is currently worth $132.

However, some traditional stocks have not been far off. Netflix had a strong performance this decade, rising 4,280 percent. It's not too surprising given how ubiquitous it now is. Even new films are now launching on Netflix instead of heading to the cinema. But it's epic rise has led to an increase in the number of competitor video streaming companies. Will it be able to fend off the competition going into 2020?

Along with the rise of Netflix, and watching TV at home in general, another company did particularly well. Domino's Pizza saw an increase in share price of 3,000 percent. Who knew pizza and TV were a winning combination?

In line with the trend of not needing to go outside, Amazon grew considerably in the last decade, rising 1,250 percent. It's worth noting that not only does Amazon ship products to your door but it also offers a TV streaming service. What's next, Amazon pizza?

Those doing yoga, trying to work off the 1,000 calorie pizzas, helped to boost the price of Lululemon shares, a retailer known for creating activewear and clothes for "most other sweaty pursuits." They rose by 1,300 percent.

On a different track, healthcare company Abiomed saw a 2,000 percent rise in the last decade. It creates medical devices, such as artificial hearts.

Shotly behind Amazon is NVIDIA, known for creating computer chips. Interestingly, it pulled in $1.95 billion in revenue from its crypto mining business. But it wasn't without controversy. In September, critics accused it of surreptitiously influencing the development of an upgrade to the Ethereum network. But nothing was ever proved.

Other profitable investments of the decade were payments processors, including Mastercard and VISA, up 1,100 percent and 760 percent respectively. Google shares rose by 350 percent and Apple shares went up by 840 percent.

Read the original:

Bitcoin, Ethereum are most profitable investments of the decade - Decrypt

Over the past few days, analysts have begun flipping bullish on Bitcoin (BTC), claiming that the asset is on the verge of bursting higher after the brutal bear market that has destroyed bulls over the past few months.

Despite this shift in sentiment, a prominent analyst has asserted that it is wise to keep a close eye on the cryptocurrency charts, for he is observing that BTC is on the verge of doom due to a confluence of historical technical factors. Doom, he suggests, means Bitcoin will collapse all the way to $1,000, as the maintaining of current levels will indicate that BTC still has long-term upward momentum.

Velvet, a trader who called the latest decline to the $6,000s weeks ago when Bitcoin was trading at $8,000, recently noted that BTC is on the verge of doom.

In the tweet seen below, through which Velvet conveyed his analysis, it was depicted that Bitcoin is trading just a smidgen above the 100-week moving average (currently at $7,000), which is a level that the cryptocurrency has always trended above during bull markets. Thats not to mention that the one-week Relative Strength Index and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence are sitting on key historical supports, which acted as barriers to bear markets.

He claims that if these levels are lost on a macro basis and Bitcoin drops to the $5,000s as a number of cryptocurrency traders expect, it will confirm we have lost momentum to the upside, confirming an Elliot Wave analysis C-Wave that will bring the asset to $1,000 with time.

If Bitcoin holds the current levels, he expects the asset to rally to $20,000 170% higher than current levels by March as illustrated in a previous report from this outlet.

Unfortunately for bulls, there is some evidence to suggest that bears could gain the upper hand if they dont already have it that is.

Analyst CryptoThies recently noted that despite the strong nearly 15% recovery from the depths of $6,400, his indicator, dubbed MarketGod, is still printing a sell signal on the December candle.

He notes that MarketGod has called these macro trends 4/4 in the past six years of Bitcoin prices history, making the latest sell signal rather potent, for it implies that there are months more downside ahead.

Thats not to mention that the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) a much-used trend following indicator used to determine directionality in markets on the one-month Bitcoin chart recently crossed bearish, with the blue (MACD) line crossing below the orange (signal) line.

This bearish crossover was last seen in June/July of 2018, preceding and predicting the abovementioned 50% decline seen at the end of last year.

See original here:

Bitcoin Price On Verge of Long-Term Doom; Heres Why - Ethereum World News

The crypto wallet and digital exchange TronWallet has been in the market for two years already, competing with its rivals to be the best wallet for the community. Now, the team announces that the latest version of their product gets rolled out TronWallet 3 - with Bitcoin operations finally added to its mobile app. Ethereum will be the next coin to come on the platform, they say.

TronWallet has exclusively shared data on its recent upgrade with U.Today.

After the upgrade, TronWallet 3 supports the flagship crypto asset Bitcoin (that is now supported for both PC and mobile versions of the product). The upgrade now allows the 160,000 users from over 180 countries to keep Bitcoin and perform operations with it inside their TronWallet.

The wallets team has been intending to integrate Bitcoin for a long time already, since numerous customers have been continuously requesting the integration of BTC support.

The projects team now intends to expand the circle of its users and lure Bitcoin fans into using TronWallet 3.

Bitcoin will be the first crypto on the wallet listed apart from TRX andTron-powered tokens. This way TronWallet will take a step towards becoming a multi-currency wallet. Other coins will be listed in the near future as well, with their vast community voting for which coin to add next.

Must Read

TronWallet 3 is also about to introduce a brand new SWAP option that will make exchanging crypto assets simpler for the users. The team is going to start with launching a TRX to BTC swap, adding other coins and tokens later on.

The goal is to improve the process of token exchange for the platforms customers, make it faster and easier.

The platform will also introduce a new feature in TronWallet 3 dubbed Portfolio, which allows keeping wallets for each coin in the portfolio in one place and provide customers with an easy way to manage those coins.

The official Twitter page of TronWallet announced that on December 27 itconducted a token burn of 136 mln TWX coins that it had bought back from the community by that time.

This was made to make the TWX coin more stable and reduce its supply.

See original here:

TronWallet Fires Away Updated Version with Bitcoin Transactions and TRX to BTC Swap Feature - U.Today

Bitcoins price has been under the $7,600 range for over a month now. Even with 3 major retests of the resistance at $7,660, Bitcoins price hasnt managed to breach it. With the formation of a double bottom in a medium time frame, this was supposed to change. However, it hasnt so far.

The double bottom is a bullish pattern, provided the price breaks above the neckline with sufficient volume to continue the bullish momentum. Although there is a decreasing volume trend, there hasnt been any breach above the neckline. As Bitcoin fails to reconquer the strong resistance at $7,600, its collapse is also strong support at $7,236. Moreover, the VPVR indicator showed a point of contact at this support [$7,236].

Perhaps, the reason why Bitcoin would fail to fully evolve into a double bottom pattern would be a major overhead resistance. The 2-year daily moving average has not been breached since 26 September. For over 32 days, Bitcoin has constantly tried to breach this resistance and failed.

The daily chart showed another narrative for Bitcoin, a rather bearish narrative for things yet to unfold. As seen in the attached chart, the retest of the 2-year DMA has failed and the price is retreating.

Additionally, an interesting observation here is that the December 2018 bottom and the current price action are acting as support for the price, at press time. However, the worst will happen when BTC breaks this support. Bitcoin is known for triangle patterns and a bearish breakout. Take for example the bear rally in 2018, one where Bitcoin broke down from $6,000 to $3,000 or the $9,000 to $7,500 drop in September 2019.

Since the overall trend for Bitcoin is bearish and the formation of death cross personifies the bearish momentum, the chances that Bitcoin will break to the bottom are higher than usual.

The drop from the daily time frame could take BTC below the $6,400 level, one which is the current lowest local support. However, the drop would be much more brutal and could take BTC below $6,000. Moreover, BTC dominance has also peaked at 70 and has started to collapse. This would also pave the way for altcoins to perform since they havent had an alt-season in a while.

View original post here:

Bitcoins double bottom close to failing; sub-$6,000 levels on the horizon - AMBCrypto

As numerous countries around the globe are already celebrating the advent of 2020, it's time to take a retrospective look at the performance of Bitcoin in the previous year.

2019 was the year of highs and lows for the dominant cryptocurrency but it still managed to come out on top with a 95 percent yearly gain, according to data provided by blockchain analytics startup Skew.

Must Read

Bitcoin's price action was uneventful for almost half of the year. Skew has estimated that there were 150 days when BTC didn't move by more than one percent in a day. Meanwhile, the average absolute daily move is about 2.4 percent.

The wildest price move was recorded on Oct. 25 when Bitcoin surged by almost 40 before these gains quickly started to evaporate.Meanwhile, thetwo most painful moves for the bulls came on June27 and Sept. 25. BTC is still struggling to break out of the six-monthfalling channel that was created as a result of the former.

Despite the fact that BTC is seemingly becoming less volatile, more than $800 mln was liquidated on BitMEX, the top derivatives exchange, with longs being responsible for the lion's share of this sum.

Must Read

With people poppingbottles of champagne across the globe, the big year of the third Bitcoin halving has already arrived. The beliefthat the forthcoming reward halving would trigger another price rally became one of the major crypto narratives as early as in 2019. Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht predicted that BTC could witness a moonshot to $100,000 in 2020.

However, not everyone is enthusiastic. CoinLists Andy Bromberg recently told The American Banker that the halvening had been already "overpriced in." In fact, he expects the Bitcoin price to dip after the much-awaited event.

Maybe its been overpriced in and everyones bought into this thesis and we see a dip post-halving.

As reported by U.Today, Bloomberg analyst Eddie van der Waltclaimed that there wouldn't be enough demand to replicate the success of previous post-halvening cycles.

Continue reading here:

This Bitcoin Halvening Could Be Drastically Different, According to Bloomberg Analyst - U.Today

2020 is fast approaching and the last decade will be behind us. Throughout the last ten years, the biggest unicorn firms were born like Uber and Airbnb. However, even though Bitcoin isnt a company, the best investment of the decade belongs to the decentralized cryptocurrency Satoshi created. In fact, Bank of Americas recent securities report highlights that an investment of $1 in bitcoin at the start of 2010 would now be worth more than $90,000.

Also read: Regulatory Roundup New US Crypto Bill, Frances 1st Approved ICO, Muslim Crypto

This week, a great number of people are reminiscing about the last ten years and a slew of individuals understand that the advent of Bitcoin was quite significant during this period of time. The most valuable startup of the last decade didnt raise money, didnt have employees, gave away the cap table, and let anyone invest, said the popular philosopher Naval Ravikant. Besides Ravikants opinion, theres data that shows bitcoin was the best investment during the last decade.

Bank of Americas recent securities paper explains that between 2010 and 2020, oil has weakened and negative interest rates have been good for gold markets. But if a person invested $1 in bitcoin in 2010, it would be worth well over $90k today, BoAs report underlined. Because of bitcoins great performance record, the decentralized asset has surpassed every investment vehicle in the last ten years.

Now lets just say someone followed gold bug Peter Schiffs advice and invested in gold in 2010, which was trading for $1,113 per Troy ounce at the years open. Ten years later, gold has done well for itself touching a high of $1,542 per ounce and thats a fairly decent +38% gain. In the last decade bitcoin, however, has gained a whopping +8,999,900% and this year alone, BTC has outpaced golds market performance in the last ten years. In 2019, BTC has gained +96% compared to golds +10.8% increase.

Besides precious metals, if Bitcoin was a company it also outpaced investments in the most profitable unicorn businesses created in the last decade. Profitable startups throughout 2010 and 2020 include Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, Snapchat, Spacex, Tesla, and Pinterest but an investment in bitcoin surpasses all these public stocks by a long shot. For example, if you compare the +8.9 million percent BTC gain to investments in Netflix (+4,177%), Amazon (+1,787%), Apple (+966%), Microsoft (+556%), Disney (+423%) and Google (+335%), numbers show there is no comparison. The angel investor and former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, recently explained his thoughts about the cryptocurrency revolution during the last decade compared to the decades unicorn firms.

As the decade ends, the biggest unicorn of the 2010s wasnt Uber, Airbnb, or Snap It was Bitcoin, Srinivasan tweeted. Please note that all three of these [companies] and many other unicorns are great companies I take nothing away from them. But to my knowledge, nothing else founded in the same timeframe held at $100 billion for a longer time. Srinivasan added:

From an investor standpoint, this is important to know.

A number of crypto proponents agree with Srinivasan and Ravikants statements about cryptocurrencies throughout the last ten years and the subject is often discussed on forums and social media. Replying to Srinivasans tweet, former Bitcoin Foundation director Bruce Fenton said:

[Bitcoin did all of this] without a centralized marketing fund, no salespeople, no roadshow people pitching sovereign wealth funds or family offices and no fundraise or premine.

Even though the digital asset was the best investment of the decade, it also provided significant innovation, financial disruption, and changed the way people perceive money. People can bypass corporations, financial institutions, and governments in a censorship-resistant fashion like never before. Its safe to say that cryptocurrency innovation will make the next ten years quite revolutionary.

What do you think about how bitcoin is the best investment in the last decade? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Moneymorning.com, Pixabay, Fair Use, and Wiki Commons.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Visit link:

Bitcoin Gained 8.9 Million Percent Over the Last Decade - Bitcoin News

The last five years have been a test phase for bitcoin derivatives, which began tentatively when Bitmex eased into life in 2014. Now, as the cryptoconomy prepares to enter a new decade, derivatives products will play a pivotal role in price discovery. 2020 will be a big year for bitcoin and for the futures markets where billions of dollars will be won and lost, and the next bull market will begin.

Also read: South Korea Imposes $69M Tax Obligation on Crypto Exchange Bithumb

In 2019, crypto futures volumes approached those of spot trading. In 2020, futures are on course to blow right past spot levels and keep on trucking. The success of derivatives platforms Binance Futures and Bitmex, as well as new products from the likes of FTX, Dydx, and Synthetix, has convinced many that 2020 could be the Year of Derivatives. And U.S. regulators are lending credence to the notion: Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the independent regulator that governs the countrys futures and options markets, recently hinted that it could approve a new crypto-based derivative product backed by Ethereum in the course of 2020.

Out-of-the-box products serve to attract new players and new capital to the crypto derivatives market. But will the spate of novel products capture sufficient volume and play a role in shaping bitcoins price action in the coming year? And if so, who stands to benefit most?

Singapore exchange Bybit is planning to move into Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese and Spanish markets, Okexs new USDT-margined Perpetual Swap Trading is likely to gain traction, and decentralized derivatives products are expected to see broader usage as defi adoption continues. Synthetix the second largest defi app in the Ethereum ecosystem has just announced a partnership with Chainlink, meaning it no longer needs to rely on centralized price feeds for its derivatives trading mechanism.

Todays traders are now spoilt for choice, with bitcoin futures trading platforms feeding their appetite for high leverage on an array of digital assets. Traders arent limited to BTC and ETH, either: they can long or short altcoins such as cardano, enjin, tomo, and stellar if theyre feeling bold.

Improved fiat-crypto gateways such as Plutus virtual bank account and debit card have also increased the appeal of derivatives exchanges to retail investors, who are no longer locked into tether (USDT). Enhanced crypto-fiat conversion means traders can spend or reinvest their profits without needing to jump through multiple hoops. Services like Plutus enable crypto and fiat to be changed within a single app, forming the launchpad and off-ramp for traders seeking exposure to the broader cryptoconomy. Better fiat connections are often overlooked when assessing the health of derivatives markets, but these gateways are vital in driving capital in-flows.

In terms of institutional interest in bitcoin futures, the U.S., where much of the innovation is happening, will dictate matters. One platform seeking to play a major role is Bakkt, which launched bitcoin options and cash-settled futures in the U.S. at the tail-end of 2019. While the former is the first regulated bitcoin futures contract rubber-stamped by the CFTC, the latter will initially be available via the ICE Futures Singapore exchange. In December, open interest on Bakkt bitcoin futures reached an all-time high of $6.5 million and with the ascension of CEO Kelly Loeffler to the U.S. Senate, the next 12 months are shaping up to be interesting.

Bakkt isnt the only platform contributing to a market that has evolved greatly since traders first sought to profit from falling prices during the 2018 downturn. Binances bitcoin derivatives surpassed the volumes of its spot offering at various times in 2019, leading the juggernaut to invest an undisclosed sum in derivatives platform FTX. This after it had already acquired spot and derivatives exchange JEX, a move which enabled Binance to add options and futures to its platform.

Speaking of bitcoin derivatives, CME Groups Tim McCourt recently celebrated the two-year anniversary of the exchanges operations in this field. In a short article noting the markets forward curve, he revealed that CME had traded over 2.4 million contracts with a notional value exceeding $92 billion from 12.5 million BTC. Some speculate that the growing interest of trading exchanges like Bakkt and CME stems from reduced BTC volatility in comparison to previous years. In any case, the preponderance of such platforms gives derivatives traders plenty of options.

As derivatives players vie for market share, battlegrounds are coming into clearer focus. Blade, the San Francisco-based exchange supported by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, just announced its commitment to zero-fee trading a flagrant affront to perpetual swap titan Bitmex. UMAs Bitdex specification also presents a possible route to non-custodial perpetual swaps, though more work is required to develop this concept.

So what does all this surging activity mean for bitcoins price? According to Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of Coinshares, the growth of the crypto derivatives market means that bitcoins price is becoming less relevant which will keep it in check even after the halving. Demirors believes that bitcoins evolution into an investable asset will, in effect, decouple its price from both its value and supply and demand. With the crypto derivatives market coming to wider attention, a greater number of investors may also choose to hedge their positions via derivatives to manage price risk, leading to less volatility.

All told, the bitcoin derivatives market looks to be in rude health, even if it remains small when compared to other commodities markets. For one thing, traditional investors are likely to be enticed into crypto as a consequence of their familiarity, since derivatives are routinely used in regular financial markets. In fact, a great many institutional traders have thus far been reluctant to engage with crypto due to a paucity of tools to hedge trades and manage risk. 2020, then, and the decade it heads should bring greater leverage for crypto derivatives, including those in the defi ecosystem, greater liquidity, and greater competition from players old and new.

Do you think derivatives markets will dictate bitcoins price action in 2020? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see whats happening in the industry.

Kai's been manipulating words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written whitepapers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.

Read more:

Bitcoin's Next Decade Will Be Shaped by Derivatives - Bitcoin News

The scaling of different cryptocurrencies remains crucial. Nano, an often overlooked altcoin, is seemingly on the right track to achieve this goal.

All of these discussions need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Altcoins often tend to scale better than bitcoin, yet it doesnt necessarily help them gain traction.

Even so, Nano seems to be achieving a respectable throughput these days.

In recent days, the Nano network has seen an influx of transactions.

This is not an actual stress test, but rather someone flooding the network.

Why this action is undertaken, remains a mystery.

The results of this test are rather interesting, however.

Nano has now achieved over 1,700,000 confirmed daily transactions.

This is nearly four times as many transactions compared to bitcoin.

Rather than crumbling, it appears that this altcoins network can handle the load rather easily.

Given how big of a problem network congestion can be, Nano appears to be doing something right.

How this will impact the future use of this altcoin, is a different matter entirely.

The majority of people interested in cryptocurrency wont look past the market cap top 25.

Nanos current market cap isnt even near those levels at this time.

Image(s): Shutterstock.com

Read more from the original source:

Nano Achieves Nearly 4 Times Bitcoins Confirmed Daily Transaction Throughput - The Merkle Hash

For the longest time, critics ofBitcoinhave questioned if the cryptocurrency is a Ponzi-like/pyramid scheme.

Wikipedia defines a Ponzi scheme: A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.

While this is rather ambiguous, critics say that this applies to Bitcoin, for the cryptocurrency, due to the inflationary pressures of block rewards and such, requires constant capital input for prices to maintain their current levels of growth. The idea the critics that believe Bitcoin is a Ponzi tout is that without fresh capital, this market would collapse, much like a pyramid scheme would if new investors stopped entering the pyramid.

Once again, Bitcoin has been given the Ponzi scheme and scam treatment. This time, it was on a Yahoo Finance segment covering the cryptocurrency market.

Tendayi Kapfidze Lending Tree Chief Economist recently sat down with the media outlet to talk Bitcoin. While the hosts branded the cryptocurrency an investment, or at least as a speculative investment, Kapfidze said that he thinks its a Ponzi and a scam, claiming that he believes you can only make money in the cryptocurrency space by taking what others put in. Kapfidze continued that he thinks this space has yielded no technological developments or applications with inherent value.

Peter Schiff, a prominent gold proponent and anti-government investor (someone that would like Bitcoins seeming premise in another reality), has echoed this sentiment in the past. Per previous reports from this very outlet, the Bitcoin hater quipped that BTC is only popular as a speculative asset, not as a currency, before going as far as to say that as Google Trends shows, BTC is running out of new buyers to keep the Ponzi going.

Whether or not you believe Bitcoin is a Ponzi or not, its been very lucrative as a speculative asset over the years, not to mention that it is functional as a medium of exchange and as a long-term store of value.

Over the past decade, the price of the leading cryptocurrency has surged by a jaw-dropping 9,000,000%, making it the best performing asset of all time, not to mention that it saw these gains within a ten-year time span, which is relatively irrelevant on a macro basis.

Even in the past year alone, Bitcoin has surged by 95%, outpacing the stock market by triple and other top asset classes by dozens of percent. This strong performance comes in spite of the 50% downturn that has taken place since the peak of $14,000 was established in June.

Continued here:

Economist Brands Bitcoin a Scam and Ponzi Scheme on Yahoo Finance - Ethereum World News

The leaves that bud out of the stem, the pattern on the shell of snails, the petals of flowers; all of these have a common denominator, a pattern. Nature follows a particular kind of symmetry. The world that we live in has many mysteries to it, many that might seem chaotic to naked eyes. However, there seems to be a pattern emerging out of this seemingly chaotic world and the only way to look at this pattern would be to zoom out and look at the bigger picture.

Mystified by it, the Greeks and the Romans used the pattern in all of their structures. The repetition of these patterns is called fractals. Every decision we take might seem arbitrary, but we are collectively influenced by a higher power; not that of a higher being, but of nature.

Perhaps, the most apparent example is the stock market. Although people in stock markets are out to make profits, a pattern can be seen in the price charts; an inescapable pattern, be it Bitcoin, S&P500, DotCom bubble, gold rush, etc.

Despite our conscious efforts to stray away from the path, on a larger time scale, human behavior seems to converge, forming a repeating pattern. Over the course of 2019, Bitcoin has repeated itself, forming a fractal. To people who caught it, they had an opportunity to seize a good profit.

Similar patterns can still be identified in Bitcoin over different timescales. For this purpose, 2019 is split into 4 phases,

The period saw Bitcoin moving sideways. The price had just spiraled from $6,000 to $3,000, BTC was trying to recover from this massive collapse and hence, the sideways/stagnation. Moreover, this period is observed to have huge pumps and dumps in succession, especially on the 4-hour chart. These pumps and dumps can also be categorized as BART patterns.

To most, this period was the accumulation phase as the price had collapsed from a whopping $20,000 in December 2017 to a shocking $3,000. There was widespread miner capitulation, rampant FUD and fear in the community. Most altcoins and projects got obliterated to dust in this period.

In hindsight, the rise in April 2019 wasnt a mysterious concept. However, the surge in April came as a shock to most people in the community. No one could explain the sudden rise. While some attributed it to Asian markets, others stated that it was a fools rally and a bull squeeze. To everybodys surprise, the rally did not stop as it kept growing in size, exponentially, with each passing month. There was a paradigm shift during this phase as the bearish momentum flipped and became bullish.

The growth hit a ceiling on June 26, 2019, when Bitcoin reached a staggering $13,800. A 242% rise in under 86 days. Bitcoin showed everybody why it was a whole new game. Moreover, this period showed excessive growth when compared to the previous phase as the surges were much higher, easily more than 7% [highest pump/dump in the previous phase].

The excessive growth phase had no patterns forming as this was an unnatural rise in Bitcoins price. It was also a mini bull-run encapsulated within an extended bear cycle.

This periods correction lasted for 3 months and it ended with a massive drop in Bitcoins price. Bitcoin corrected by 42% in this phase as the price fell from $13,800 to $8,000. Just like the rally that preceded it, this dump was also uncontrollable. An interesting observation here is the fractal within Bitcoins bear cycle, as mentioned above.

Unlike the period of excessive growth, it was possible to do a technical analysis of Bitcoin. There were various patterns being formed in this phase, falling wedges, Bart patterns, rising wedges, etc.

As the name suggests, this period was Bitcoins journey to find the second bottom, a foothold, so to speak, for it to rally higher. Although the halving is a few months away, the price seems to be dropping, which is a complete negation of the narrative surrounding halving.

Speaking to AMBCrypto, Digitalik.net, a Bitcoin analyst, stated,

History has shown to us two times already that halving is very important event so I dont believe this time would be any different. If miners are to continue mining 50% less with same amount of hardware, electricity and manpower then this has to affect the price. The question is how big the magnitude will be but nobody can say this.

This phase consisted of multiple Bart patterns occurring in succession, rising and falling wedges, etc. At press time, the price of Bitcoin hovered below the $7,500 level, with Bitcoin dominance at 68.6%.

According to ChartsBTC, based on Bitcoin halving cycles, the price of Bitcoin is supposed to hit anywhere between $29K to $47K in 2020. With respect to the fast-approaching halving, Digitalik.net added,

I believe halving will have impact. The only question is how big.

On the adoption front, Bitcoin still has a long way to go. Although built as a decentralized peer-to-peer currency, Bitcoin is still far away from achieving this goal. Even with second-layer solutions, Bitcoin is still nowhere close to speeds [transaction finality and settlement] that the traditional financial infrastructure provides. As an example, Bitcoins tps is exponentially lower than what XRP and its blockchain can provide.

As for what the price of Bitcoin is going to be in 2020, nobody knows. As the price of BTC hovers in the $7,500 region, it could explode any minute and start its bull run, or it could sink lower, perhaps, hitting the same bottom as in December 2018. However, some people in the Bitcoin ecosystem are still bent on seeing BTC rally before the halving event, which is scheduled for March 2020.

Read the original:

Bitcoin exhibited recurring patterns over 2019, similar to the ones seen in nature - AMBCrypto