Bitcoin is currently experiencing its quietest week in several months as it continues ranging within an incredibly tight trading range between $3,550 and $3,650. Bitcoin’s bout of sideways trading has carried into the altcoin markets, which have been closely tracking its price action and haven’t seen too much movement over the past few days.
That being said, one popular theory floating around the cryptocurrency communities may signal that Bitcoin is close to seeing a major upwards price movement based on its upcoming mining block rewards reduction – dubbed a “halving” – which is scheduled to occur in May of 2020.
Bitcoin Stable Around $3,600
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading down marginally at its current price of $3,585. Although Bitcoin is seeing dwindling volatility, it is down from its weekly highs of $3,750 and is up from its weekly lows of $3,550. Mati Greenspan, the senior market analyst at eToro, spoke to MarketWatch about BTC's trading volume, saying that it is currently down approximately 20% from where it was a week ago. “We have seen a few sudden spikes but that’s mainly because volumes have tracked off. They are down about 20% from a week ago,” he explained. Although Bitcoin may be flat currently, Moon Overlord, a popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, recently said that if history repeats itself, Bitcoin will trade sideways until this May, at which point it will begin a new uptrend, as BTC historically begins surging precisely one year prior to its halving events. He explained,
Bitcoin has traditionally starting pumping around 1 year on average before it's halving date… The next halving is estimated to be May 2020, meaning that the uptrend will begin in May of this year… In which case you'd only have a few months left to buy $BTC at this low of price.
Altcoins Closely Track Bitcoin’s Price Action
Currently, the altcoin markets are seeing decreased levels of volatility as Bitcoin continues trading around $3,600. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is one of the exceptions to this, as it has seen some relatively large price swings over the past several days. BCH is currently trading down 1.5% at its current price of $127, down from its three-day highs of $135, but up significantly from its lows of $118. Recently, John Kelvin, an analyst for Covesting, noted that BCH/BTC is forming a pennant flag pattern, which could lead to further gains if it is able to break above this formation. “A bullish pennant is should most times be identical to a symmetrical triangle. To receive a valid breakout buy signal in a bullish pennant, we wait until three valleys are formed,” Kelvin explained, further noting that BCH – which is currently trading at 0.0355 sats – would be a “buy” if it can reach 0.036743 sats.
Ethereum (ETH) and XRP have both dropped slightly today, and are trading down 0.85% and 0.8% respectively.