Analyst: Bitcoin to Target $9,500 Due to A Few Key Factors

Bitcoin has been hovering within the $8,100 region for the past couple of days, with each attempt to break above and below this region quickly resulting in sharp rejections that lead BTC back into this consolidatory range.

Analysts are noting, however, that they anticipate this bout of sideways trading to result in a major bull favoring movement, which could lead it to surge up towards the coveted five figure price region in the coming several days and weeks.

Here Are the Factors Analysts Are Watching That Could Spark the Next Massive Bitcoin Rally

Currently, Bitcoin is trading sideways at its current price of $8,150, struggling to garner any momentum in one direction or another.

It is important to note that bulls did attempt to spark a rally yesterday, which ultimately resulted in a strong and swift rejection at $8,300 that sent the cryptocurrency reeling down to below $8,000.

It does appear that this level has become strong support, as the brief dip to lows of $7,950 was quickly reversed by buyers, who were able to push it back up to its current price levels.

In the near-term, UB – a popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter – believes that Bitcoin will soon incur a massive amount of momentum that allows it to surge past all its key resistance levels, which could lead it as high as $9,500 before it finds enough resistance to halt the rally.

“$BTC – I believe it’s more than likely we see continuation to the upside over the next few weeks with a target of ~$9.5k. *A Weekly Close below $7,460 would completely invalidate this argument* Dips are for buying,” he explained, pointing to the chart seen below.

As for what technical factors could help catalyze and sustain this rally, it appears that the crypto recently broke above a key multi-year resistance level.

FlibFlib, another prominent crypto analyst, discussed Bitcoin’s break above this level in a tweet, telling his followers that it makes him feel overall bullish on the cryptocurrency in the near-to-mid-term.

“In my humble opinion, Bitcoin has already broken out on the CME and on Spot exchanges with confirmation on the OBV & now just waiting on a higher high on Macro TFs. Maybe some chop sideways and a bit of a backtest but everything is there to make me overall bullish,” he explained.

If this trendline break is sustained by bulls, it could mean that the crypto’s recent lows will mark a long-term bottom.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Cole Petersen.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin Shines This Week

By Joji Xavier | Published: 1/10/2020 9:46 AM ET

The past week has been generally good for Bitcoin. In the last seven days the most popular cryptocurrency improved its value by more than $500, or 7 percent.

As of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $7864.

The virtual currency showed signs of resurgence in the New Year after a relatively dull December.

After dipping below $7000 on January 2, the currency managed to rise from its slumber.

On Tuesday Bitcoin crossed $8000, for the first time since November 20. $8438 was the highest recorded in 48 days, and also of the year.

The 7-day period starting January 2 has been an unprecedented dream-run for Bitcoin, which saw a steep rise of $1338, or more than 20 percent in its value.

However, those gains fizzled in the latter half of the week with price falling back to the $7,000-$8,000 range.

As of today, Bitcoin has a market capitalization of $142.89 billion, and a 24-hour trade volume of $24 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Will Google's Quantum Supremacy Break Bitcoin in 2020?

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

            JAN 09, 2020

The topic of quantum computing has been steadily gaining interest within the cryptosphere, particularly so over the past 12 months. Given the heightened curiosity and concern, it is worth resolving some open questions around quantum supremacy for the crypto community, as there is a tremendous amount of misinformation circulating online.

Will our Bitcoin be stolen?

Many people harbor the fear that Sycamore, Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, could outsmart the system and steal everyone’s Bitcoin. If there were to be no changes to the current implementation of the Bitcoin network, this would most likely become a reality within five to 10 years. So, while there is currently no need for users to worry, developers are well advised to commence preparations.

What’s truly alarming is that “quantum deniers” refute the reality of the problem and insist that concern should be curbed. Sadly, the exact opposite is true. We must place a collective focus on solving the issue, as complex distributed systems (does blockchain ring a bell?) are anything but easy to upgrade to a whole new crypto stack. Having spent a decade or two maturing, the ecosystem could be massively undermined if quantum computing advances to the expected degree.

Certainty about this stems from the fact that current encryption schemes (including those used by Bitcoin and Ethereum) have already proven vulnerable to signature forgery executable by quantum computers.

Asymmetric cryptography relies on keypairs (namely a private and public key), where the public could be calculated from its private counterpart but not the other way around. This is due to the impossibility of certain mathematical problems like factoring a number that’s a product of large primes or calculating the multiplicand of the generator that resulted in a public key, which most blockchains and cryptographic systems use.

If the calculation could be done the other way around (i.e., calculating a private key from a public key), the whole scheme breaks. All we need is more qubits and stability in these systems for such attacks to become executable.

Will Google mine away all the remaining Bitcoin?

This is another often-asked question but in reality, quantum computers are far less efficient at symmetric crypto-related computations than asymmetric crypto-related ones. As for the numbers, it takes 2^128 operations on a mainstream computer to locate a BTC private key of a given BTC public key, whereas it only takes 128^3 operations on a quantum computer to achieve the same feat.

For hashing, the difference — while still enormous — is a lot less. In essence, we need to worry more about people with quantum computers spending/stealing our money rather than fretting about Google mining the remaining Bitcoin. Even if that were the case, after successfully mining 2016 blocks, it would set the difficulty to “quantum level” — meaning that Bitcoin would only be mineable by quantum computers.

The tricky question here is that the difficulty is hitting such levels already that miners need to wait to be able to readjust the timestamp field of given blocks because they already ran through all possible nonces for a given block without finding a result below the difficulty target. In light of this, I would venture to say that this mining-related problem is more theoretical than practical. We have already noted that time can be the limiting factor in finding a correct solution for a block, not performance, even without quantum computing-based mining.

The one thing that everyone should focus on

Should Bitcoin holders be concerned about the quantum problem in 2020? No, but there is a caveat: Cryptocurrencies (meaning their developer communities) and enterprises should focus on the issue.

What if there are quantum computers already built that are much more capable than Google’s Sycamore and we are just not allowed to know about them?

We should seek and upgrade to a quantum-resistant crypto stack in blockchain implementations and all other systems that depend on asymmetric crypto (e.g., banks, governments, etc.) as soon as possible. Quantum supremacy is inevitable — it’s just a case of when.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Original article posted on the CoinTelegraph.com site, by Johann Polecsak.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bulls Roar As Bitcoin Price Surge to $8,100, Reversing Bearish Trend

It appears that Bitcoin bears might finally be dead. For the fourth or the fifth day in a row, the leading cryptocurrency has rocketed higher, recently surging as high as $8,120 — the highest price the cryptocurrency has seen in just around 50 days due to a tight bottoming pattern that formed over the course of the holiday season.

Right now, BTC has stalled around $8,000, finding some resistance at these levels due to historically-relevant horizontal resistance regions.

Despite this, investors are becoming convinced that Bitcoin’s momentum for (at least the next couple of days) is in the upward direction.

Bitcoin Bulls Convinced Uptrend In Works

Adaptive Capital’s new analyst, CL, recently noted that Bitcoin’s four-hour chart is showing clear signs of a reversal on a medium-term basis.

The trader and chartist specifically looked to the Bollinger Bands indicator, which he claims shows a bullish trend is currently emerging:

“When price starts deviating away from the 4hr 200MA, out of the bands, especially after consolidation, and a BB squeeze, a new trend usually emerges. There is not much more to say, I will be buying dips. Send it.”

Indeed, as he notes in the collection of charts below, every time Bitcoin and Bollinger Bands acted as they just did, a breakout emerged.

That’s far from the end of it. Trader Byzantine General noted that while BTC is currently encountering some resistance around the $8,000 region, the four-hour chart just printed a 50 exponential moving average and 200 exponential moving average bull cross, suggesting bulls are decisively in control.

Hold Your Horses

While the bulls seem to be in control, there are a few hurdles for Bitcoin and its ilk to mount before all is well on a medium-term basis.

Trader Big Chonis noted that Bitcoin is currently encountering a declining resistance line that has constricted the cryptocurrency’s price action for the past six or seven months. The cryptocurrency will need to see a key daily candle close above that level for it to be invalidated, for it has resisted BTC multiple times over the past few months.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

A Top Executive Thinks Bitcoin (BTC) Can Surge 500% In 12 Months

Bitcoin to Hit $50,000 By EOY?

Speaking with Bloomberg, Antoni Trenchev, head of Bitcoin lending platform Nexo, was quoted as saying that he expects for Bitcoin to “very easily” hit $50,000 — more than 500% above current prices — sometime in 2020. Trenchev didn’t give much reasoning to back this lofty prediction, only stating that he believes BTC is an “incredible” asset that isn’t correlated with any other markets.

Though, Trenchev’s prediction of $50,000 lines up with a price model created by PlanB, a pseudonymous quantitative cryptocurrency analyst working in traditional markets.

His so-called stock-to-flow model, which relates BTC’s price to the scarcity of the asset to a statistical accuracy of a 95% R squared, suggests that after the May 2020 block reward halving, the fair price of the cryptocurrency will rise to at least $55,000.

Although some have laughed at the model, suggesting that it is pure coincidence that Bitcoin’s price moves in tandem with its level of scarcity, the model has been lauded by many cryptocurrency investors as the best way to explain the craziness seen in this nascent market.

Hold Your Horses, Analysts Say

While there is some evidence to suggest Bitcoin will explode that high in the coming months, the consensus is that the following 12 months will be one of steady growth for the cryptocurrency market, not crazy, parabolic growth as Trenchev suggests.

Dave the Wave, a popular cryptocurrency trader, recently noted that Bitcoin may see some bearish price action in the near term, but will soon restart its long-term bull trend that will bring it to $25,000 — 270% higher than current prices — by the start of 2021.

He specifically cited a five-wave Elliot Wave bull run, which will see Bitcoin bottom in the next few weeks before a surge to $25,000, see a brief correction, then finish the bullish run above $100,000 in a few year’s time, not within the coming year.

This was followed by another prediction, in which Dave stated that he expects Bitcoin prices to tighten in the first half of 2020, then break out in the second half of next year to near the $20,000 all-time high. By early-2021, he expects the price of the leading cryptocurrency to have posted “new sustainable all-time highs.”

Also, Mike Novogratz, the former Wall Streeter turned cryptocurrency fund manager and investor, said that he expects Bitcoin to hit $20,000 in 18 months’ time. This would represent a 180% move from current levels if it plays out.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Here's What Must Happen for $9k Bitcoin Price in the Coming Months

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

        JAN 04, 2020

Bitcoin (BTC) made a sudden jump of 8% yesterday and is currently hovering at around $7,300. As the price bounced from $6,900, a higher low is presenting itself on the chart, but does this mean that the bottom is there?

Crypto market daily performance. Source: Coin360

Bitcoin still stuck in sideways range and downtrend

BTC USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView

The price of Bitcoin is still moving inside this downwards channel since last year’s high of $13,900. Remarkably, the price corrected towards the “Golden Pocket” Fibonacci area (0.618-0.65 level) and is currently showing a potential higher low.

The green area is also a significant area from 2018, as that was the zone the price of Bitcoin bounced on for 6-months.

Given that the price bounced from $6,900 to $7,400, there’s buying pressure shown from this area, indicating that the price might be bottoming inside this range.

Linear chart showing potential wedge structure

BTC USD 1-day linear chart. Source: TradingView

The linear chart shows similarities with the log scale chart. However, there’s more of a falling wedge construction rather than a channel. Meaning that the price is gathering strength for a breakout through the coming weeks, marking this level as a bottom area.

The chart is also showing a bullish divergence, which marked the temporary low at $6,500. Generally, bullish divergences mark a trend reversal (also seen in the December 20118 low at $3,100).

If price maintains this red box as new support and a higher low is established, then Bitcoin could face a rally towards $9,000 over the coming months.

Total market capitalization hovering at support

Total market capitalization 1-day chart. Source: TradingView

Similar signs show the total market capitalization chart, which has retraced to April 2019 levels. A test was confirmed by a sharp bounce upwards, followed by a potential higher low construction as we speak. Aside from these signals, a substantial bullish divergence potentially marked the bottom of this retracement.

This retracement is currently hovering around the 0.618-0.65 Fibonacci level as well (similar to Bitcoin). If market capitalization can maintain this higher low and consolidate on this level, a breakout to the upside of this falling wedge looks more likely than further downside momentum.

Crypto fear & greed index. Source: Alternative.me

Usually, when an asset is marking a temporary top, the sentiment is euphoric and greed becomes palpable. The opposite effect is the case around bottoms. People are usually scared and depressed as they are expecting further downwards momentum. The Fear & Greed Index has been showing fear for the last weeks, indicating that the overall market sentiment doesn’t expect a breakout to the upside.

Is such a sentiment warranted?

The price is still moving south, which means that some fear is warranted in the market. However, as the price is trying to bottom here, it would be interesting to look at potential upside momentum rather than further downwards. The same can be spotted on altcoins, for example, Ethereum (ETH).

ETH USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView

The ETH chart is showing a similar wedge formation as the Bitcoin and total market capitalization charts, meaning that a breakout to the upside is likely to occur in the next month. Aside from that, the price bounced from a support area here and is potentially making a bottom formation.

ETH BTC 2-day chart. Source: TradingView

On the BTC chart, many altcoins are facing a long term downtrend. Ether, for example, is in the midst of a 2-year old downtrend that it must break out of. Interestingly, the months of January/February have historically seen Ether price significantly increase and/or breakout of downtrends.

During 2016, a similar breakout was shown, after which 2017 repeats the same move. First, a bottom formation includes a bullish divergence. After this, a higher low is marked, followed by a breakout to the upside.

In 2018 and 2019, a significant move to the upside was seen in the ETH/BTC pair as well, though no breakout of the general downtrend occurred. This time it’s possible, however, as Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are already breaking their downtrends that have been in place for two years.

The bullish scenario for Bitcoin

So what must Bitcoin price do now to generate such a breakout to the upside?

BTC USD bullish scenario. Source: TradingView

As discussed previously in the article, the price needs to maintain the blue area as a higher low and not drop below it. As long as that level is sustained as support, a breakout to the upside is likely to occur. This would cause the 6-month old downtrend to break to the upside, which potentially means the end of the downward momentum.

The targets based on previous support/resistance and Fibonacci levels first include $8,000. If that’s broken, the price is ready to aim for $9,100-9,500, which would typically shift the sentiment from fear to neutral.

The bearish scenario for Bitcoin

BTC USD 1-day bearish scenario. Source: TradingView

A bearish scenario can be warranted through the opposite of the bullish scenario and is pretty basic. If the price of Bitcoin is not able to hold the blue area as support, the bullish divergence is not confirmed, and the price is ready to continue downwards.

In that regard, a potential retest of the $6,900 level would grant an excellent short opportunity, and then the next support zones can be found in the $6,200-6,500 area.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Original article posted on the CoinTelegraph.com site, by Michaël van de Poppe.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

As Global Tension Grows, Analysts Believe Bitcoin Could Be Poised for Move to $8,000

Bitcoin has incurred some serious upwards momentum today, which comes close on the heels of the cryptocurrency’s recent sell off that sent it as low as $6,800. Today’s bullish surge further enhances the narrative regarding BTC’s recent lows within the lower-$6,000 region possibly marking a long-term bottom.

Further adding to this notion is the growing global instability that was sparked by yesterday evening’s US-led airstrike on an Iranian military official, which closely preceded a price surge for assets like Gold, Crude Oil, and even Bitcoin.

Will Global Instability Help Fuel a Bitcoin Rally?

Although the prospect of a war with Iran is grim, it would prove to be beneficial for some asset classes, including precious metals, commodities like crude oil, and possibly Bitcoin and other digital assets.

It still remains unclear as to whether or not BTC is truly a safe haven asset, as its short lifespan and the fact that it has never traded within a global economic recession makes it incredibly unclear as to how it would truly fair during any period of intense global turmoil.

In the near-term, however, analysts do believe that Bitcoin could see some upwards momentum, with CryptoBirb, a popular analyst on Twitter, telling his followers that BTC could soon surge up to $8,000 if it is able to break above $7,500.

“$btc may pull 8000s if 7.5k bull flag breakout is safely reclaimed as support. If you can’t monitor market today often playing any aggressive swing may be recipe for failure imo. Wouldn’t be surprised if US-Iran expanded tensions repeated China tensions May 2019 impact on Bitcoin,” he said while pointing to the chart seen below.

Although it also remains unclear as to what will ultimately result from the tensions between the US and Iran, it is possible that investors will flock to Bitcoin in anticipation of it trading like a safe haven asset.

Bitcoin Jack, another popular crypto analyst on Twitter, explained in a recent tweet that he believes it is still too early to go long on BTC, but that if it confirms the pending inverse head and shoulders pattern, it may be poised for significantly further upside.

“Best not ignore these technically correct (so far) potential bullish structures. Not completed, but formation so far follow iHS guidelines. Can’t go long here. 7470-7700 is short hedge but stop should go BE fast. Retracement is aggressive buy option. Break, retest for confirmation,” he explained.

How BTC trend in the coming days will likely either validate or invalidate the notion that Bitcoin’s current momentum is being catalyzed by the growing global tensions.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Cole Petersen.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin Ends 2019 On A Better Note Than Last Year

By Joji Xavier | Published: 12/31/2019 9:53 AM ET

Bitcoin may be standing nowhere near its all-time high of nearly $20000 reached two years ago, but as 2019 comes to a close, the most popular cryptocurrency has managed to regain the strength it lost a year ago.

The virtual currency was trading at $7,224 as of this writing – 95 percent increase from $3689 recorded on 2018 December 31.

From its weak position at the beginning of 2019, Bitcoin has been on a strong recovery path in the following months. Despite a struggling crypto market, Bitcoin continued to grow with frequent bullish movements.

The first two quarters proved decisive with more than 300 percent improvement in value.

Bitcoin touched the year's peak of $12575 on July 9. And a bearish outlook emerged in the third quarter of the year, which witnessed some dramatic fluctuations in price levels.

Bitcoin experienced mostly a downward trend during the rest of the year, and in the last quarter it struggled to break above $7500.

After dipping to $6538 on December 17, the price has remained consolidated above $7,000.

In a market where the trading volume and market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies suffered, Bitcoin managed to stand out, less affected.

Tuesday, Bitcoin's market capitalization remains at $131.98 billion, with a 24-hour trade volume of $21 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe