Bitcoin (BTC) is so far holding gains after a major breakout on January 6. The breakout brought the price of bitcoin above $4,000 on some exchanges. However, a (schduled) maintenance outage on one of the world’s largest cryptoasset exchanges, Bitfinex, stoked concerns of volatility in the markets.
The price dipped below $4,000 on some exchanges as Bitfinex went offline (it remains offline at time of writing) at about 10:00 UTC, but was defended there, and bitcoin’s value has stabilized for now above $4,000.
(source: CryptoCompare)
Ethereum (ETH) is cooling off but holding strong on top of recent gains, after starting another leg – on January 1 – of the major uptrend uptrend that Ethereum has been on since December 15. The price of ether has held above a support/resistance zone of about $150 – almost double its December 15 price in the low $80 range.
(source: CryptoCompare)
Very High Volume
Data from CryptoCompare.com show that trading volume has been very high in the past days, especially on December 6. The total number of trades across the industry hit a 30-day high yesterday, at 52 million individual trades.
(source: CryptoCompare)
CryptoGlobe reported two days ago that the vast majority of retail traders were “net-invested” in bitcoin, meaning they are in “long” positions, according to research data from DailyFX. (To hold “long” means to hold an asset with the expectation of a rise in the asset’s price, whereas to “short” means to sell an asset – and especially, to sell against an asset with leverage in a future contract – with the expectation that the asset’s value will fall.)
(source: TradingView.com)
DailyFX did not necessarily see this as a buy-signal however, with the report’s author saying “the fact [that] traders are net-long suggests Bitcoin prices may continue to fall.”
(source: TradingView.com)
Before Bitfinex went down today, bitcoin shorts were indeed falling precipitously – with longs also taking a small dent, but overall still soundly beating shorts.
