Bitcoin’s bulls have presently been able to defend the $4,000 price level for the past several days, leading to a bout of sideways trading. Despite this, new data shows that Bitcoin’s short positions and selling volume are gradually decreasing, which could mean that bears are losing their ground.

Where Analysts Think Bitcoin is Going

In a recent market update, Mati Greenspan, the senior market analyst at eToro, spoke about the declining selling pressure behind Bitcoin, further noting that the overall cryptocurrency markets are currently consolidating after surging this past weekend.

“The crypto markets are consolidating gains at the moment and it seems that once again prices have stabilized. Bitcoin is holding steady at $4020 as of this writing. One thing we wanted to highlight is a little graph…that shows the short selling volume on the bitfinex crypto exchange. The red line is Bitcoin's price. The blue line is the level of short selling, which has dropped nearly 30% since its peak on January 1st,” Greenspan explained.

The graph he is referencing shows that both the short positions and the selling volume have decreased significantly from where they were at the start of the New Year, which may be partially due to the market surge that occurred this past weekend.

Although the decline in short positions definitely signals that bearish traders are losing confidence in the breadth Bitcoin’s price weakness, some investors are still incredibly bearish on the markets.

While speaking to Bloomberg, Travis Kling, the founder of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Ikigai, said that he still thinks the markets will see fresh lows as 2019 goes on.

“It’s unlikely that the bottom is in for Bitcoin. I am certainly willing to change my mind, but the preponderance of evidence leads us to believe that we’ll see more lows before we head higher,” he said.

Bitcoin and Most Altcoins Trade Flat, Tron Surges

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading sideways at its current price of $4,040 with $4,000 appearing to be a level of relative support. Bitcoin is leading the markets, and until it makes a large move in either direction it is likely that the vast majority of altcoins will continue trading sideways.

Ethereum (ETH) is trading up marginally at its current price of $151, and has found support over the past several days in the high-$140 region.

XRP has risen slightly more than most major altcoins, and is currently up nearly 2% at $0.37.

Tron (TRX) is today’s best performing altcoin, and is trading up over 10% at its current price of $0.0288. Tron’s price surge is the direct result of the upcoming launch of the BitTorrent token (BTT) which will serve a large user base and will be powered by Tron’s network.

All the cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article are available to trade on covesting.io