“Bitcoin’s no longer boring,” Bloomberg declared on 16 November 2018, at the end of a week that saw Bitcoin mostly lose its recent image as a “stablecoin” as the result of a dramatic drop in price on November 14th, the day before Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork.
Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence, Bloomberg’s research arm on the Bloomberg Terminal, “predict the price could fall to $1,500,” which suggests that the Bitcoin price could fall more than 73% from its current level (at press time, according to data from CryptoCompare, Bitcoin is trading at $5,593, up 0.81% in the past 24-hour period).
On Wedneday, the BTC price, which was around $6,369 at 06:00 UTC, had plunged more than 12% by 20:00 UTC (when BTC was trading around $5,569), to reach its lowest level in over a year. The altcoins with the exception of the stablecoins (excluding USDT) were not doing any better, with most of the top 20 cryptoassets suffering double-digit percentage drops.
On November 15th, as covered here, CNBC referred to the bloodbath in the crypto markets as “Crypto Meltdown,” with Fast Money Trader Brian Kelly, who is the founder and CEO of crypto investment firm BKCM, blaming the nervousness in the crypto markets on the uncertainly caused by the “Bitcoin Cash Civil War” (the fight between the two competing implementations of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV, to claim the title of the real/true Bitcoin Cash). Others were blaming the drop in Bitcoin’s price on the lowering of Bitcoin’s hash rate as the result of some Bitcoin mining pools supporting the ABC camp, such as Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com, switching their attention temporarily from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash.
Travis Kling, the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of cryptoasset management firm Ikigai, told Bloomberg on November 15th:
“I didn’t sleep well last night. There’s a small chance that, it’s difficult to estimate, that something really bad could happen related to Bitcoin Cash that could then impact the entire crypto market.”
Mike McGlone, a Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, warned that the bear market would not be over anytime soon:
“[The slump] was sparked by the pump for the Bitcoin Cash hard fork. That pump that began a few weeks ago, got the market a bit too offsides with speculative longs playing for the good-old days. But this is an enduring bear market.”
On November 16th, McGlone tweeted:
Finally exiting an extended consolidation period, we expect Bitcoin to further gravitate toward its continuous mean of about $1,500. The near-$6,500 mean, median and mode of the four-month range is now formidable resistance. pic.twitter.com/qAWJHWsIOZ
— Mike McGlone (@mikemcglone11) November 16, 2018
Although, thankfully, not all market analysts are as bearish as those at Bloomberg intelligence, even legendary Bitcoin bull Thomas Lee, who is the co-founder (and Head of Research) of independent research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, is feeling quite a bit less bullish on Bitcoin these days. Lee, who had lowered his year-end price target for Bitcoin from $25,000 to $22,000 on July 5th, in a note to clients on November 16th, lowered his estimate again, this time from $22,000 to $15,000.
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