Charts: Is $10,000 the new bottom for bitcoin?

10th September 2020

[This is an analysis I received for Bitcoin. I think in the long term, Bitcoin has possibilities. I feel much more comfortable about Bitcoin especially and the future of crypto. This will help to move things forwards for us. The more methods there are to transaction the better for whites. Jan]

There’s never a dull moment in crypto! The beginning of last week looked promising, but the market soon began to tumble. In the end, the correction was eventually halted just above the $10,000 mark – a weekly drop of almost 15% from its $12,000 high. Ether too fell roughly 25%, and was red across the board for other small-and-mid caps.

It wasn’t just crypto that took a hit, though – the stock market also fell just before the weekend. The VIX Index, which measures volatility on the S&P 500 and is often called the fear index, jumped to the highest level in over two months.

It’s still too early to tell if this is a minor correction or a trend shift that means the fear is back. Last time we saw a significant spike in VIX, both the S&P 500 and BTC corrected sharply, but it all ended up as a minor correction before continuing to the upside. Will this happen again, or are we in for a larger correction this time?

Percentage Change in Price Over the Last Week

Price Analysis

A bull market never goes by without corrections and there was never any reason to think this would be an exception. Last week, the bitcoin price dropped down from $12,000 to $10,000 after BTC failed to break through the $12k zone for a second time since reaching its yearly high of $12,500.

It’s not all bad news, though. The weekly close for bitcoin at approximately $10,250 is above the resistance from February. With the RSI looking oversold, as well as the downtrend being halted at the fairly recent May high and psychological barrier of $10,000, there should be a fair amount of buying power here. Furthermore, turning previous resistance into support is normally a bullish technical signal.

If this weekly level holds, bulls should be looking towards a bounce back to the February’s previous yearly high in the $10,500 range, and could once again test the yearly highs.

On the downside, the price has stagnated for a couple of days and this could be of concern. Losing this level would most likely take us down to the lower $9,000 area, with strong support to be found at $9,500. This would be a bearish technical signal, as this show of weakness would give the bears the ammunition they need to start selling/shorting the market down.

Massive drop in market sentiment

With the current price decrease in the crypto market, the sentiment has dropped significantly. From being well above 80 last week, the index value halved in a day and is now back in a fearful state. Having been in “Extreme Greed” for over a month, a correction was well overdue, but few would have predicted such a large shift in sentiment.

Strong bounce in bitcoin volume

The downwards trend for the real bitcoin volume stopped last week, as the trading activity across all spot exchanges increased significantly in tandem with the drop in price. The 7-day average volume is up more than 60% over the past week. However, increasing volume with falling prices is normally not a good signal, as the price correction is supported by strong volume. A price bounce this week should also be supported by the same strong volume to give confidence in more upside price action.

Volatility is back

A month after BTC pushed up towards $12,000 for the first time this year, the volatility is once again increasing. However, volatility is this time led by a significant price drop, after BTC dropped more than 10% last Thursday. The 7-day volatility is now back above 4%, not seen since the beginning of August.