It’s a tough day to be trading crypto, it seems, with at least one Bitcoin trader comparing the $185 billion cryptocurrency’s price charts to a “penny stock.”
Garbage trading right now. Scalped a few profitable trades but it’s mostly just whales pumping and dumping.
Neutral for now, but death cross on 4 hour looming.
Order books are thin and this action makes #bitcoin look like a penny stock.
Bullish above $11k, Bearish below $9800 pic.twitter.com/BqYVl0qB7v
— Jacob Canfield (@JacobCanfield) July 19, 2019
Bitcoin: History’s Best Penny Stock?
Saying the four-hour charts were looking grim for cryptocurrency, Jacob Canfield complained that he couldn’t seem to make out this morning.
Responses were to his tweet were mixed.
I am with you.. choppy as shit right now
— Easy as 1,1,2,3 (@FiboSwanny) July 19, 2019
At least one other trader thought there might be a silver lining:
The battleground is the 45m timeframe, below 45 all golden crosses above 45min death crosses, the 45-minute time frame shall decide. The MACD looking a bit hopeful.
— CryptoGats (@Cryptogato1) July 19, 2019
There’s always a contrarian in crypto, though:
Hourly price update (USDT):
• BSV (Bitcoin): $140.32
Dead forks:
• BTC (Blockstream Turd Coin): $10374.24
• BCH (BTrash): $301.42— BitcoinCheckBot (@BitcoinCheckBot) July 19, 2019
It’d be hard to predict another bull movement at this point, with the recent one failing so miserably.
Bitcoin’s Not All Grown Up Yet
Certain traders had called the overbought conditions and signaled that a lot of the movement was “emotional,” but some bulls carried on at their own peril.
The recent market activity might rightly be referred to as a “bull trap.”
Whether or not the investigation into BitMEX and other negative news played any role in the meltdown has not yet been determined by anyone.
Has anyone made a graph showing Bitcoin price relative to the dollar with the x-axis being block numbers and not Gregorian time?
— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) July 19, 2019
#ethereum #bitcoin One of the most promising projects, the team knows a lot about their business! Their tokens will grow in price, I suggest everyone to look closely at this project! #ico #tokensale #ripple #stellar #airdrop #cryptocurrency ( https://t.co/4rmlpJxNdd)
— Daniel Kaneswaran (@Dankaneswaran) July 19, 2019
For all its shortcomings, Bitcoin has wide and deep perceived liquidity.
True liquidity is something we’ve not seen a real test of. How many BTC could actually fetch the current price of over $10,000?
Moving forward, it will become more and more critical that real exchange data is secured. Without it, traders may mistakenly believe the market to be much stronger than it is.
Some traders expect extreme volatility to return to Bitcoin. If history repeats at all, we may see a long period of trading in tight ranges.
Whatever happens, we have to wonder how true it really is that BTC acts like a “penny stock.” There’s certainly a lot more money moving the levers in crypto markets, but they also behave wildly. People are often willing to cut and run, just like with under-researched penny stocks.
If it is a penny stock, though, it’s one of the most expensive and successful such stocks in the history of the pink sheets.