Bitcoin’s value will come in time, even if investors are spooked now, crypto advocate says

Bitcoin's value will come in time, even if investors are spooked now, crypto advocate says

Bitcoin's narrative is hard to pin down, but as with early internet stocks, real traction will come in time, cryptocurrency investing strategist Meltem Demirors told CNBC on Monday.
Despite bitcoin's aspiration to be a safe haven asset, the cryptcurrency has not seen a rally with the stumble of the Turkish lira.
But crypto bulls are still expecting to see real traction and growth in time.

Bitcoin's narrative is hard to pin down, but as with early internet stocks, real traction will come in time, cryptocurrency advocate Meltem Demirors told CNBC on Monday.

"New technologies that shift the paradigm take a long time to really understand," Demirors, who acts as chief strategy officer at digital asset manager CoinShares, said on CNBC's "Fast Money."

Despite bitcoin's aspiration to be a safe haven asset, the cryptcurrency has not seen a rally with the stumble of the Turkish lira, which hit a fresh all-time low against the dollar on Monday.

Except for a brief rally in July, bitcoin has been on a near-steady downward slide since briefly topping $19,000 in December. Even the announcement more than a week ago — that the Intercontinental Exchange would help create an open and regulated digital asset ecosystem — brought little movement in bitcoin's price.

Despite that, crypto bulls hailed it as a step toward legitimizing the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was last down about 0.6 percent at $6,277.

This might be an opportune time, but no one is viewing bitcoin as a store of value because the cryptocurrency is struggling with a narrative problem, Demirors said.

"The narrative around bitcoin is still really hard to grasp," Demirors said. "Really the only metric we have for most cryptocurrencies is the price, and price is such an imperfect metric. What does actual utilization look like? That's really the struggle for crypto right now."

Demirors suggested institutional and retail investors should ignore the price and think of cryptocurrency in similar terms to an early internet stock, such as Amazon, Intel or Microsoft. Although successful now, it took years for those stocks to recover from initial highs after the dotcom bubble burst.

"What we saw in crypto was this massive run-up, where everyone got 'FOMO,' or fear of missing out, as we like to say. What it caused is a speculative bubble," she said.

But now that the bitcoin bubble has burst, Demirors said capital is starting to get deployed into "building real businesses that serve a real purpose."

Demirors said it isn't clear when bitcoin might begin to regain value, or what that might look like, but progress will depend on determining which metrics are best for measuring cryptocurrency's growth.

"We are starting to see real traction. A lot of it is really dependent on finding those data points, those metrics, that are going to drive that growth story," she added.

Chloe Aiello

News Associate for CNBC.com

David

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch – Still Waiting for Directional Clues

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch - Still Waiting for Directional Clues

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch – Still Waiting for Directional Clues

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

Bitcoin price is trending below a short-term descending trend line as it hovers at the long-term floor.
Traders are likely waiting for the next catalysts to decide which direction the breakout could take.
Technical indicators appear to be suggesting a slowdown in bullish momentum soon.

Bitcoin price is still trending lower on the short-term time frame but buyers are defending the long-term floor.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is still above the longer-term 200 SMA but is gearing up for a bearish crossover to signal a pickup in selling momentum. In that case, price could have stronger odds of breaking below the $6,000 support zone and trending lower.

Price is also moving below a short-term descending trend line, which is keeping near-term gains in check. A break past this level could still encounter some selling pressure at the dynamic inflection points on the moving averages.

RSI is turning higher after previously climbing out of the oversold area, though, so there may still be a pickup in buying pressure from here. Stochastic is also heading higher to suggest that buying momentum could stay in play for a bit longer. Once both oscillators reach overbought levels and turn lower, selling pressure could return.

Market Factors

Bitcoin price continues to struggle to keep its head afloat after a couple of rough weeks, the latest of which featured a decision by the SEC to delay their ruling on remaining bitcoin ETF applications.

With that, traders could stay on edge until September or when the decision is announced. Even then, another denial for the proposed rule change could mean more losses for bitcoin price and the rest of its cryptocurrency peers. Approval, on the other hand, could be the positive catalyst that investors are waiting for in order to sustain the expected rebound for the remainder of the year.

SARAH JENN | AUGUST 13, 2018 | 4:08 AM

David

Is Bitcoin Repeating Its own history

2014 Bitcoin crash layout by trader babyjungle — published April 20 .

2 weeks ago I found this fractal made from trader @chewner. We all know that trading is based on news and history, and it was funny just to watch how the price was following almost exactly the same path as in 2014. Of course now the scenario is quite different, we are not in a massive adoption yet, but there is a lot of industry and big players in this space. Despite those facts, the price is moved by cicles and by repetitive patterns and today the price just hit exactly the level marked on the chart.

It may be just a coincidence, but I´ll watch the chart just for fun. I´m actually expecting the price to reach around 9200 before a correction.

Here is the chart.

Posted by David Ogden

Link to Original Post https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/EbhIJvue-2014-Bitcoin-crash-layout/

David

Bitcoin Gold – What to Know About the Blockchain’s Next Split

Bitcoin Gold - What to Know About the Blockchain's Next Split

Bitcoin Gold – What to Know About the Blockchain's Next Split

Anyone who owns bitcoin will soon be able to receive a new cryptocurrency.

As of block 491,407 on the bitcoin blockchain, another alternative version of the protocol will be launched, resulting in a variant that's being branded bitcoin gold (BTG).

The project, which seeks to improve bitcoin's technology by changing how its competition for rewards is conducted, is the second to launch since August via an increasingly common process called a "hard fork."

Readers may remember the term from the launch of bitcoin cash, the alternative version of the bitcoin protocol that spurred global headlines for unexpectedly creating billions of dollars in value, seemingly out of thin air.

Looking ahead, many industry observers are expecting the same results this time around, though there may be reasons for enthusiasm to be tempered.

What is bitcoin gold?

In short, bitcoin gold aims to achieve two goals:

First, bitcoin gold wants to change how mining works by making it so the most powerful mining machines (called ASICs) can no longer be used.
Second, by attracting more people to this system over time, it hopes to free the bitcoin network from the large companies that offer these products, and it argues, command undue influence on the network.

Instead of scaling bitcoin to support more users, bitcoin gold tweaks bitcoin in an effort to "make bitcoin decentralized again." This, proponents argue, will make the network, designed to offer an egalitarian way to send payments digitally around the globe, more accessible to users.

And while created via the same mechanism, bitcoin gold differs from bitcoin cash in a few ways, most notably in its distribution.

Differences include:

The bitcoin gold cryptocurrency is set to be created in advance (prior to the code being open-sourced to the public).
About 1 percent of the total cryptocurrency tokens mined before the blockchain goes public will be used to pay the bitcoin gold development team.
Once this distribution is over, the team claims it will launch the cryptocurrency so that users can redeem their coins.

Of course, while it aims to become the de-facto version of bitcoin,others might consider bitcoin gold an "altcoin" – the term has long been used to denote any cryptocurrency launched using bitcoin’s existing code, but that has an alternative market or use case.

Do I have bitcoin gold?

All bitcoin owners will receive the cryptocurrency at a rate of 1 BTC to 1 BTG, setting the stage for possible market activity.

But, that's not to say it's totally intuitive to retrieve.

One quirk is that it'll be easier to redeem the funds from wallets or exchanges that recognize the cryptocurrency. The easiest way, then, to retrieve the bitcoin gold is to move bitcoin to a wallet or exchange that supports bitcoin gold, or to hold bitcoin in a wallet where you own your private keys (rather than holding them with an exchange).

To date, 20 exchanges and wallets promise to support bitcoin gold once it launches, according to the project's website.

Although one of the most popular U.S.-based exchanges, Coinbase stated on October 20 that it does not support bitcoin gold due to skepticism about how developers have made project information available to others.

"At this time, Coinbase cannot support bitcoin gold because its developers have not made the code available to the public for review. This is a major security risk,” the post reads.

This is perhaps something to keep an eye on as the project progresses. Although the project will officially fork on Monday night, it's not yet open to anyone and everyone, and there’s still plenty left on the developers' to-do list.

Who is behind bitcoin gold?

The team behind the hard fork appears to be a relatively small group.

Hong Kong-based LightningAsic CEO Jack Liao, who's an outspoken critic of the state of bitcoin mining, first broached the idea of bitcoin gold back in July.

His company LightningAsic sells mining equipment, including GPUs, the type of computing hardware bitcoin gold is supposed to rely on.

Since first introduced earlier this summer, the team has expanded to include pseudonymous lead developer h4x3rotab, as well as a team of five other volunteers who are now working on developing and promoting the cryptocurrency in their spare time.

The project can be tracked on Github and on the community Slack group.

How do people feel about bitcoin gold?

All that said, for those interested in exploring or using bitcoin gold, it's worth noting that it has generated its share of controversy.

Satoshi Labs CEO Marek Palatinus, who launched bitcoin's first ever mining pool, is skeptical the project will actually work to decentralize mining as planned.

And he's not the only one to throw shade at the new project.

Bitcoin developer Rhett Creighton is working on alternative bitcoin gold "protest fork" software that seeks to pursue the same idea but without setting aside some of the new cryptocurrency for development.

If more than 51% of miners choose to use his software, the so-called pre-distribution to developers will be erased, he told CoinDesk. "It's up to the miners to decide what they want," he added.

All in all, it's unclear if business and mining groups will ultimately support the project, and if they do, how much value the alternative blockchain could create.

For example, while a list of roughly 50 businesses and miners support the so-called Segwit2x fork, similar support hasn't been seen for bitcoin gold. Likewise, though bitcoin cash began with support from vocal miners and exchanges, bitcoin gold has arguably yet to benefit from such early activity.

Author: Alyssa Hertig

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

David