2019 will see the end of the bitcoin crash and the end of Crypto Winter. I drew this chart a long time ago back in June:
My Bitcoin price prediction back in June Credit: ADVFN
We are here:
The bitcoin price today Credit: ADVFN
While it’s a brave man that predicts a fall when the market is up 5%, I still see the end of this crash at $2,500 and if the capitulation is wild, anywhere down to $1,000. These moments are hard to catch; a low can last for barely minutes, so in a way the true low is almost uncapturable, certainly at any sort of ‘size.’
I continue to buy little chunks of bitcoin–I even bought back some bitcoin cash at 25% of what I sold it at before its fork debacle but the time to bite hard is still not here. 2019 will deliver that buying opportunity.
Timing the capitulation is all but impossible, it could happen while we sleep, it could take a few weeks, it could happen in an hour. The trick is to buy in after the worst is over and not try to guess where that is exactly.
If you look at the transit of the year in news you can see that crypto and bitcoin have lost a lot of traffic from its biggest markets.
China, a huge driver of bitcoin, has been actively throttling crypto. This had to happen because bitcoin is a great way to funnel money out of that country. China is acutely aware that many of its rich citizens are keen to expatriate their funds as they are their families and the authorities are currently trying to keep the floodgates of their financial systems shut against a pressing tide.
Choking off crypto is an obvious move as it is and remains an obvious route for cash out of that country. Meanwhile, those in South Korea keen to have a large chunk of bitcoin in case the North suddenly seems to be on the verge of nuking the South, have stepped back. Now that Trump and Kim Jong-Un have gone from trading threats of Armageddon to being chums it is not surprising the attractiveness of crypto ‘flight capital’ has fallen and so has the buying pressure and price.
Meanwhile, the fraudster hoards have punched a hole in the demand for ICOs, lessening the demand for etherium and bitcoin to buy the new tokens. In turn, the liquidation of etherium and bitcoin to fund ICO startups and on the dark side cash out the successful scammers, has dragged the market down too.
2019 will see the beginning of a new wave of ICOs, many actually regulated and ‘real.’ This will start to reignite crypto. Once the last leg of the crash is over, buying will start to push bitcoin up and as the date of the halving of bitcoin mining rewards starts to be seen on the horizon, the smart money will also pick up its acquisition. Importantly, regulators will start to get bitcoin and crypto in perspective.
It’s not a big deal.
Even with all the funky tokens that are crypto securities not currencies at all, the whole global market is worth $100 billion, equivalent to six weeks of Federal Reserve tightening and 0.4% of the U.S.
stock market or a decent sized Nasdaq tech stock.
For the denizens of crypto, what happens on the stock market is of little interest, but if the U.S. market crashes it must effect bitcoin.
How it will affect crypto is another matter. Equities will either fall slowly in 2019 or come down in a historic crash.
Unless something wildly unexpected happens, the quantitative tightening will either slowly grind stock and bond markets down or crash them in one jumbo event.
If the market crashes, crypto may take a dive as losers liquidate assets to cover losses and margin.
This will be a great time to buy as it will be a temporary fall for crypto and a great ‘buy the dip’ moment. If the crash is especially nasty, crypto will rally just like gold will in times of danger.
Behind all this, bitcoin will rally hard once the crash is over and it will top $5,000 within the year.
That is not to say it won’t go a lot higher but in general markets recover a lot slower from a crash than they fall.
Bitcoin and crypto is a very, very, small market but it has a very, very, large place in people’s imagination, especially among the young generation. This is the beginning of something huge, not the end. 2019 will most likely not be much remembered in the history of crypto, which has only just started to be written.
—-
Clem Chambers is the CEO of private investors Web site ADVFN.
com and author of Be Rich , The Game in Wall Street and Trading Cryptocurrencies: A Beginner’s Guide..
