Bitcoin Price Fluctuation in 2018.
The first quarter of 2018 can be described as the worst for Bitcoin in terms of performance. The coin has lost more than $100 billion capitalization and more than half of the gains it has made since the beginning of the year.
January was the month that signaled that the spike of last year was over. This was not very surprising as the month is known to be bad for investments. BTC started the year at shy of $13,000. Analysts are of the opinion that the coin had grown too quickly with many new entrants adopting it in the Q4 of 2017 and so had to make corrections in January. This coupled with regulatory rhetoric by agencies such as SEC put a downward pressure on the market.
Despite these factors, there is a consensus among investment experts that whenever an asset class goes up in value too quickly, the next phase would be a plunge of correction. That many of the new entrants had little confidence in Bitcoin to invest long term means that most would panic and sell off in a bearish market.
The crypto market was hopeful February would bring brighter outlook to the market, however, no one reckoned with a bad news just as Bitcoin was closing the month of January just above the $10,000 mark. The news that the Japanese exchange had been hacked, and the hacker making away with $530 million worth of NEM catalyzed another round of sell offs that made Bitcoin fall to $6,200 February 6, its lowest in nearly 3 months.
The Coincheck hack would bring back memories of another, Mt. Gox and both would have substantial impact on the cryptocurrency market. The coin rebounded reasonably and by February 20 was trading at over $11,600. Positive signals from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was said to be instrumental to this short-lived bullishness. The CFTC which had earlier permitted two exchanges list Bitcoin futures contracts last year showed keenness “to learn everything that we need to know about the emerging technology and its potential application” according to J. Christopher Giancarlo.
By March 12, it was revealed that the trustee of Mt. Gox, another exchange that was hacked in 2004 has been dumping the exchange’s BTC on the market in the bid to liquidate the company. It became obvious that these dumps have been going on for some time and had had effect on the market. This led to a sustained drop for weeks for the coin which started the month valued $10,700. The dump was reinforced by selloffs due to tax burdens as bitcoin holders realized that they were taxable. It was said that younger investors who had never made investments were shocked at the realization thy would pay capital gain taxes which could be substantial due to the massive BTC gains of last year.
By end of March, the coin was trading around $7,000. It’ll fluctuate around that mark into April. As at the time of this report, Bitcoin price is $7,600 having fluctuated around that $7000 mark for a couple of weeks. Only few days later it gets rapidly to the $8000 mark.
Does it mean, a new and brave comeback of cryptocurrencies and a more positive market situation?