1) Bitcoin technical analysis

Let’s analyze what was happening with Bitcoin price in the last months.

BTC/USDT Chart on HitBTC Exchange

The rise of trading volume and an increase in the number of trading positions in December 2018 indicated that the market had touched its bottom, which was $3200 on December 15. Bitcoin price had reached its lowest point, and the upward movement started again. Besides, the trading volume has noticeably increased, which has led to an increase in volatility. These factors will likely lead to a significant rise in buyers/investors entering the field. And this, in turn, will lead to an increase in Bitcoin price, as I said in one of my previous articles.

Moreover, on the daily chart, we can also see the typical False Breakout pattern, which is a classic sign that the market is going to move upwards.

Bitcoin Price Chart at the end of 2018

Surely, a rational investor shouldn’t make his assumptions based entirely on technical analysis. It should be used together with fundamental analysis which considers the overall economic situation, the potential of the technology staying behind the asset, and many other factors. So let’s move on to the next points.

2) The history examples

A new, breakthrough technology arises all of a sudden out of nowhere. Unfortunately, in the beginning, its full potential is obvious only for a small “technical nerd” community, and initially, it is supported solely by these people.

Then, little by little, it becomes more and more popular. Companies and entrepreneurs start to pay attention to the opportunities the technology gives. More and more people start to invest in it. At some point interest for this technology gets to a critical level. Mass media start to cover it all day long, and everyone is interested. Any company which is somehow concerned with the technology starts to attract enormous sums of investors’ money. Even having a specific technical term in a company’s name is enough to get a buzz and increase a company’s value.

It goes this way to a certain point, and after that, it looks like the story is over. The hype is gone. The bubble has burst. The prices of all the technology related assets fall to the minimum.

Nothing like? Yes, I’m talking about the dot-com bubble. Its story is suspiciously similar to the situation which is happening with cryptocurrency now. But did the Internet end together with the end of the dot-com companies?

Hell no. Moreover, as we can see now, the value of many top internet companies which were founded before the dot-com bubble did fall after the bubble had burst, but afterward, it has risen again with the vengeance. What’s worth only Amazon!

Amazon was one of the leading companies in times of the dot-com bubble. Its value increased together with other similar companies in late 1990th, and it also significantly fell in price after the dot-com bubble had burst. Luckily, it didn’t ruin the company. The potential behind online retailers stayed very high, and since 2008 we’ve been watching a significant growth of the company’s value.

The same thing will very likely happen to Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies. Now Bitcoin price is still on its low, but it will come back with force. Yes, Bitcoin was overvalued in the last year and the situation we had in December 2017 was really a market bubble. But it absolutely doesn’t mean that these assets are not valuable anymore.

Selling Bitcoin now is like selling Amazon stocks in 2000 after the dot-com bubble burst. I’m sure you don’t want to regret doing something like that.

3) Development of the cryptocurrency field

It’s clear that at the moment the blockchain technology is still far from the point of its maximum development.

The cryptocurrency infrastructure has been built over the last several years. Now we have a number of acting and reliable cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and mining pools. At the same time, the existing infrastructure does not cease to develop.

A lot of great ideas which has been proposed before are being implemented now, like crypto loans or Bitcoin futures. The Bitcoin protocol itself is also being developed in a more perfect state with different Bitcoin forks and implementation of such protocols as SegWit.

Needless to say, cryptocurrency is not the one and only possible application of blockchain technology. A number of ICO projects, offering different adaptations of blockchain technology, were under development in the last couple of years and only now many of them are starting to act.

So the field is still highly prospective. Just look at the current crypto services and companies: exchanges, wallets, coins, ICOs. They continue to develop, investing more and more money in the field. Look at the banks and governments which are working on the development of blockchain-based law- and banking systems. Do you believe that these people could invest in something unpromising? Consider these guys with pockets full of money as a role model for your cryptocurrency investment career.

Another good thing which happened in the last couple of years is purifying of the market from the scam projects together with the projects which didn’t survive the market competition. This natural selection is a necessary step for the further development for every new and competitive field, so the cryptocurrency market enters 2019 being much stronger than before. Isn’t it a good sign?

4) Market stabilization and the end of mass hysteria

The huge blockchain and cryptocurrency hype in the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018 wasn’t actually an entirely positive phenomenon for the cryptocurrency field. Of course, it has drawn the attention of hundreds of millions of people to the Bitcoin phenomenon and made cryptocurrency a valuable asset as opposed to its previous small experimental role, which is definitely a good thing.

But besides that, it has led in the cryptocurrency field millions of people following the hype and hoping to get rich doing absolutely nothing. This mass hysteria somehow devalued the cryptocurrency phenomenon, making it a target for serious criticism. Since that many skeptics criticized the blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, claiming it to be more of a “hype” thing than really a breakthrough technology.

So the fact that the cryptocurrency field is gradually getting rid of the people hoping to get rich doing absolutely nothing and not having even basic economic or investment knowledge is a good thing. I’d really like to believe that now the cryptocurrency market will be evolving not because of hype, but owing to creating real value. Serious investors, who are necessary for the development of the field, are used to think with their own heads. They don’t follow the crowd but instead make decisions based on real facts and analytics. And this gets us to the next point:

5) Large investors are coming

Let’s say bitcoin price has declined once again and you are selling your assets. For you, it may look like the best and most obvious decision.

Well, who do you think is on another side of your trades? Why are they accumulating thousands of BTC and ETH on their accounts? Believe me, it isn’t just because they are happy to help you to secure your investments. There is always an inner reason.

An interesting fact is that when some asset’s price declines, small players usually sell it in fear to lose even more than they have already lost. On the contrary, the big players such as banks and hedge funds will often buy these assets for cheap while everyone else is getting rid of it.

Needless to say, when the asset’s price rises again, the big players make really big profits. Being major companies and having strong risk management systems, they can afford risks concerned with holding big volumes of highly volatile assets.

Even though we haven’t seen much official information about the large investors entering the field, the cryptocurrency market fluctuations of the last couple of years have shown that some of the big players have already started to act anonymously, making large trading operations with different cryptocurrencies. These actions heavily influence the cryptocurrency prices, making it go up and down, what we are able to see on cryptocurrency charts. It’s a typical way of actions for large investors before they enter a new market: they test it first and only after that the official arrival is made and announced.

This strategy is especially applicable to the cryptocurrency field. Unfortunately, cryptocurrency is still concerned with a big number of rumors and misconceptions. Any big investment firm entering the field may face misunderstanding in the financial community. So it’s still a common practice for big investment companies to act anonymously through the third parties until the cryptocurrency market gets more stable and widely recognized.

In the last quarter of 2018, some big companies have actually started to enter the cryptocurrency market officially. For example, Goldman Sachs has become the first investment bank to offer a bitcoin trading product to its customers. So very likely this tendency will become a real trend in 2019. And, after the big players enter the market, the next cryptocurrency bull run is absolutely inevitable.