Bitcoin Brutalized
Bitcoin (BTC) hasn’t been doing all too hot as of late.
The cryptocurrency is down by some 45% from its year-to-date peak of $14,000, sentiment has begun to flip widely bearish once again, and investors have begun to brace for Crypto Winter 2: Electric Boogaloo, as it were.
And in the past day, Bitcoin has lost some 3%, falling under $8,000 for the umpteenth time over the past few weeks. Seeing that there hasn’t been an immediate recovery to establish higher highs, analysts have begun to flip bearish. Some on Twitter, in fact, have begun eyeing $6,000, $4,000, or even lower for the flagship cryptocurrency.
There are signs that support these scary price predictions, unfortunately enough.
More Pain to Come
In a recent tweet, popular cryptocurrency analyst SmartContracter observed that the publicly-traded quote price of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, which trades over-the-counter under the ticker GBTC, recently broke through key support at around $9.8 dollars a share to fall all the way to $8.76.
But Bitcoin has yet to break the equivalent support of $7,700.
SmartContracter concluded that “as GBTC has been leading spot by about 24 hours or so for the last few months,” things are not looking good for BTC.
The analyst’s chart depicts that should Bitcoin break down as Grayscale’s Trust did, a 5% to 10% drop to the $7,300 to $7,600 range can be had.
soooo GBTC already broke down on daily yet spot BTC hasn't.
for the last few months gbtc has also been leading spot price by about 24 hours or so.
this doesnt look good for btc tbh pic.twitter.com/cjGCoKLQO0
— Bluntz (@SmartContracter) October 17, 2019
SmartContracter isn’t the only analyst to have noticed that GBTC is predicting a further collapse in the price of spot BTC.
Timothy Peterson, an analyst at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, recently observed that there is a “relationship between the premium investors pay for OTC shares of BTC and the [spot] cryptocurrency’s Price.” The idea is that when overlaid, one can tell in what direction Bitcoin is heading by looking at the premium that investors pay for shares of GBTC, which allow institutions to gain exposure to Bitcoin in a relatively safe way and on the secondary market.
With this in mind, Peterson made the following harrowing conclusion about Bitcoin’s price action:
“The relationship between GBTC premium and BTC price has not been stable and predicable over time. However, our fundamental models also value BTC at about $6,000. It appears that institutional and long-term US investors in GBTC are expecting this price level for BTC as well.”
Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash