At Last, Traders Expect High Volatility as Bitcoin Breaks $3,600: Good Start to February?

By CCN.com: In the last 48 hours, despite the withdrawal of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and VanEck Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), the Bitcoin price has increased from $3,511 to $3,657 by nearly two percent.

Although the lack of a major price movement following a highly anticipated event like the VanEck ETF withdrawal demonstrated a low level of trading activity in the global crypto market, traders expect the volatility in Bitcoin markets to increase in the upcoming weeks.

The Bitcoin ETF filing has been temporarily withdrawn. We are actively working with regulators and major market participants to build appropriate market structure frameworks for a Bitcoin ETF and digital assets in general. Will keep you updated. pic.twitter.com/o9yiN47ZKe

— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) January 23, 2019

Will More Volatility be Beneficial to Bitcoin?

Since January 11, for more than two weeks, the Bitcoin price has remained stable in a low and tight price range between $3,500 to $4,000, unable to break out of key resistance levels nor fall below crucial support levels.

Currently, there are strong cases to be made for both bears and bulls in the cryptocurrency market. The consistent lower highs Bitcoin has recorded over the past several weeks show low momentum for the dominant cryptocurrency.

As one technical analyst put it:

15-day consolidation continues. Lower highs and equal lows do not inspire confidence for bulls. Gaps shown in the crosshairs are where I expect price to eventually move when a decisive move occurs below or above the red/green boxes. Volatility incoming.

Given the tendency of the Bitcoin price to demonstrate volatility following a period of extended stability, traders generally see the price of BTC experiencing wild price movements in the first half of February. But, it remains uncertain whether Bitcoin will be able to initiate a meaningful upside movement above key resistance levels like $4,000.

A prominent cryptocurrency trader with an online alias “Crypto Rand” stated that as of now, most technical and fundamental indicators of Bitcoin point toward a bearish short-term outlook.

However, depending on the performance of the asset by the week’s end, the trader emphasized that the asset may begin demonstrating a slightly bullish bias in the short-term.

“If BTC keeps moving in the horizontal range, it will find the falling wedge resistance in the next hours and there, we will see if we have a breakout or a drop down. If the 4-hour candles close with the current structure, I would lean slightly bullish in the short-term. But, we cannot forget that we are still on a full downtrend of volume and the daily structure remains bearish,” the trader explained.

Don’t Expect Bitcoin to Escape Bear Market Anytime Soon

Historically, following every major correction or a bear market, Bitcoin has tended to take a longer time to recover and achieve a new all-time high.

The 2017 bull run of crypto was primarily fueled by retail traders and individual investors, supported by an unprecedented amount of mainstream media coverage and demand for the asset class.

When will Bitcoin break its previous All-Time High?

It took 1,181 days for BTC to break its previous ATH and 1,478 days to peak at new ATH in Dec ’17

At this rate, $BTC would break previous ATH +$20k in March 2021 or later

New Bitcoin ATHs seem to take longer with each cycle pic.twitter.com/lkwxR43JD7

— Josh Rager 📈 (@Josh_Rager) January 26, 2019

As large as the bull market was two years ago, investors including Vinny Lingham have suggested that the cryptocurrency market could require an extended recovery period to potential rebound to previous all-time high levels.

Earlier this week, Ethereum (ETH) co-creator and Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson stated that the cryptocurrency market may take 11 years to fully recover and that both investors and businesses have to be ready for it.

At the Crypto Finance Conference, Hoskinson said:

It might take 11 years for us [the crypto industry] to recover back to where we were in 2017, but we will be a dramatically different ecosystem at that point. We’ll have millions, perhaps even billions of users. We will be in many consumer products, be easy to use, [even] grandma can use it. A lot of the hard stuff will have been figured out. Like if somebody dies, how do we get their private keys, how do we handle taxes, all of the regulation will be done.

While the expectations of the long-term performance of Bitcoin and major crypto assets vary, in the short-term, many investors expect Bitcoin to experience a high level of volatility.

Featured Image from Shutterstock. Price Charts from TradingView.