UPDATE: The Death Cross drew a host of reactions from several crypto-market analysts online. David Gerard, author of ‘Attack of the 50 foot blockchain,’ noted,
“Technical analysis presumes a pure market, almost immune to individual actors. And that’s not the Bitcoin market, which is incredibly thin, ill-regulated and blatantly manipulated. Bitcoin’s price is whatever it needs to be to burn the margin traders today. That’s how the price went from $3,000 to $13,000 without any surge in retail trading, and that’s why nobody took the price rise very seriously.”
He added,
“Any technical analysis that doesn’t prominently feature the word ‘Tether’ is misleading nonsense and should be ignored. The Bitcoin market is not efficient, and anyone treating it like it is is wrong.”
eToro’s Mati Greenspan gave his input as well, with the Senior Market Analyst stating,
“There are several relevant levels of support still.”
Bitcoin is staring at Death once again.
It seems like it was only months ago when the markets were buoyant after Bitcoin climbed over $13,000, its highest point in over 18 months. To be precise, it was 28 June, 2019, with Bitcoin trading at $13,800 and the future looking bright. Fast forward four months, and the king coin has shaved over 46 percent off its price, and is now expected to fall further with the coming of the Death Cross.
Following the massive sell-off of 23 October which saw Bitcoin’s price drop by 5 percent in the hour between 1100 – 1200 UTC, the landslide began. Prior to this drop, Bitcoin was trading at over $8,200. However, in a matter of 24 hours, its price dropped by 9.75 percent. This trigger, unsurprisingly, set-off a bearish onslaught on the larger cryptocurrency market, with the altcoins experiencing significant losses too.
Source: BTC/USD on TradingView
The Death Cross was signalled by Bitcoin’s 200-day Moving Average crossing its 50-day moving average, owing to continuous downwards pressure on the price. Analysts cite the movement of the two MAs to chart long-term bullish or bearish momentum and by the looks of things, Bitcoin is going through the latter.
On 22 April, Bitcoin broke into the bullish equivalent of the Death Cross, the Golden Cross, when the MAs saw opposite movement. This signalled the coming of imminent bullish action. And so it did prove, taking Bitcoin from $4,400 at the time to over $13,000, a whopping 210 percent price increase in just over two months.
However, since the June highs, Bitcoin has dropped steadily, and at press time, is trading at only a 65 percent premium on its price when it entered the Golden Cross back in April.
The last time Bitcoin entered the Death Cross was in April 2018, when it was trading at $6,800. Due to the infamous ‘Crypto-Winter’ which began earlier in the year, the price of Bitcoin dropped from over $13,500 in January to $3,000 in December. The period of the Death Cross continued for a year, subsiding in April 2019.
Source: BTC/USD on TradingView
Despite the recent drop being the push into the Death Cross, the larger drop occurred on 23 September, owing to two contrasting reasons.
On the adoption side, the failure of Bakkt, the Intercontinental Exchange’s digital assets venture with their physically delivered Bitcoin Futures, caused bearish ripples. On the technical side, Bitcoin fell out of a prominent descending triangle that had persisted since June. Most analysts pointed to a negative breakout and the damper Bakkt news pushed Bitcoin over the edge, leading to a 15 percent price drop in 48 hours as Bitcoin dropped from $10,000 to $8,500.
