Bitcoin (BTC) investors remain net-invested in the flagship cryptocurrency despite it losing well over 80% of its value during 2018.
Research data published by DailyFX indicates that investors are beginning to take more interest in bitcoin and other crypto-related investments. According to the market research, investor interest in bitcoin was at its highest in November 2018. DailyFX’s research analyst, Fan Xu, explained:
Bitcoin: Retail trader data shows 77.5% of traders are net long with the ratio of traders long to short at 3.44 to 1. The number of traders net long is 0.4% lower than yesterday and 6.2% higher from last week, while the number of traders net short is 2.7% lower than yesterday and 6.4% lower from last week.
“Traders Are Further Net-Long Than Yesterday”
Despite the seemingly positive outlook for bitcoin, Xu noted the data analysis suggests BTC’s price is not likely to recover anytime soon. According to Xu’s market research:
Traders are further net-long than yesterday and last week, and the combination of current sentiment and recent changes gives us a stronger bitcoin-bearish contrarian trading bias.
While it’s difficult to accurately forecast future prices of cryptocurrencies, researchers at Element Digital Assets Management predicted in September 2018 that there was a “serious chance” BTC’s price would drop below $3,000.
At the time, bitcoin was trading in the $5,500 to $8,500 range (since July 2018) – which was a sign that short-term traders had been dominating the crypto market. Thejas Naval, the portfolio director at Element Digital Assets, pointed out there are “short-term players that are using structured derivative vehicles with leverage to express intraday speculation.”
Meanwhile, the firm’s quantitative research head, Kevin Lu observed that the crypto market was “in an ultra reflexive state [as it had been] moving within a range in response to seemingly every bit of news.”
Vays: 40% Chance BTC Drops To $1,000-$2,000
Notably, former Wall Street trader and prominent crypto commentator Tony Vays recently revealed that he thinks there’s an 85% chance that bitcoin has not yet reached a bottom. According to Vays’ analysis and his discussion with well-known analyst Murad Mahmudov, there’s a 40% chance bitcoin’s price will hit a bottom between $1,000 to $2,000. There’s also a 10% chance, Vays noted, that BTC’s price could drop below $1,000 as most cryptos are still overpriced.
In addition to bitcoin’s price dropping lower, Vays and Mahmudov predicted that ether, cardano (ADA), bitcoin cash (BCH) and XRP could all potentially trade at significantly lower prices in the coming months.
