A Fortnight Into 2019, Bitcoin in The Red Again

As the second week of January 2019 drew to a close, Bitcoin finished in the red, its price well under the basic benchmark price of $4000. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin is priced at just a little over $3,500, $3,558.10, to be precise.

Given that there was so much hope and positive anticipation around the price of Bitcoin since the beginning of the new year of 2019, this downward trend is disappointing to say the least. When the year began, many felt that this would be the year when Bitcoin finally escaped the clutches of the bear.

Several experts and commentators felt that now that crypto winter was possibly ending, Bitcoin would stand in the sun and shine once again, just as it had done back in 2017. Joseph Lubin, of ConsenSys and Ethereum, for example, had said that there was no way the market could go any lower than the “CryptoBottom” that had already been hit. It was time for a turnaround, most felt and everybody geared up for a truly happy new year.

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However, there were some analysts who had indeed struck notes of caution. For example, analyst Willy Woo had been convinced that Bitcoin was yet to escape the bears, as we reported recently. Could the buying streak be just a rosy tint hiding a deeper problem? That is what seems to be the case.

Data sourced from Flipside Crypto reveals that a large section of Bitcoin-heavy wallets have seen heightened activity over the last couple of months. In fact, these are the wallets that seem to have almost 60% of Bitcoin’s current market supply as part of their holdings. These wallet owners are called BTC Whales, who could potentially cause immense volatility in the price of Bitcoin by buying and selling.

The increased activity after a prolonged period of dormancy has likely triggered market changes, unfortunately, towards a negative direction.

The recorded fall of the price of Bitcoin has been about 3.03% and it is gradually falling more and more. There was a 0.10% fall in its price in a matter of fifteen minutes and it is definitely something that can prove to be rather worrisome.

As always, the plummeting of Bitcoin price has affected other coins as well, placing many altcoins firmly in the red. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and EOS have all fallen by over 7% and Ripple has fallen by a little over 3.5%. This weekend has clearly not proved to be too positive for crypto.