More blood is my bet.
Amidst a slew of ostensibly bullish signals on the fundamentals side including the announcement of physically-settled daily bitcoin futures contracts operated by the Intercontinental Exchange (owner of the NYSE) as well as announcements by Microsoft and Starbucks that they will be moving toward the acceptance of the cryptocurrency, the technicals still look lousy.
A quick stroll through cryptotwitter this morning yielded a bit more bearish sentiment than it has the last few weeks. Sicarius issuing a series of "how to survive bear markets" tweets and CryptoMessiah calling for a bit more blood as well.
My job - and your job - is to stay indifferent and analyze data as it comes in. However, my 'bias' is with the bears due the comparison of the '13 fractal to this one, technical analysis of the daily chart, and the more nebulous idea that there will be an attempt by institutional 'smart' money to drive price down to load their bags.
The good news is that I think we're going to put in the bottom soon and the next bull run will be a doozy. Until then, if you're so inclined, there is ample opportunity to increase your allotment of bitcoin (and preserve the USD value of your trading account) if you know where we're at in the market cycle.
As I've written before, I believe we're destined to bottom in the 3500 area, 3646.10 to be exact. If you would like to see some reasoning for why I believe this, refer back to my article from a few weeks ago for an explanation of the analysis and conclusion.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@voluntarymess/btc-big-picture-friday-2013-and-now
In the short-to-mid term I believe that bears will drive price down to the 6750 handle which, from a technical standpoint, is the first consolidation zone from bitcoin's upward break out of an inverse head & shoulders reversal pattern several weeks ago. That will be the next data point to re-consider the market direction. If we dive down from there, that would be fairly strong confirmation that the bear market is intact. If there is a strong bounce and a successful upward break on a re-test of the 7500 zone, that may indicate that the macro trend has reversed.
On a shorter time-frame, bitcoin is right now testing overhead resistance at the 7500 level which has acted as support/resistance since the first test on July 17th. I don't think bulls have the strength to break through and the failure of this test will be the catalyst for a break downward to 6750. Bitcoin is certainly doing a great job of keeping the cards face-down, I would have expected a more clear answer to have emerged by now. Instead, we continue to chop. Don't get eaten up in the chop.
Stay safu, fam.
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BTC: 34DsCV6m9cHez73nYDzVUk6D82yiqhKrWg