Bitcoin price analysis: BTC/USD lost 3% within an hour; Mark Karpeles disillusioned with cryptocurrencies
|- Bitcoin is sold-off amid a host of negative factors.
- BTC/USD risks to re-test February 6 low if it fails to recover any time soon.
Bitcoin lost over 3% within a single hour without a clear fundamental trigger that might have caused the sell-off.
Sure enough, there is no shortage of bad news lately, including the ban on cryptos in India and strong measures of BMO. Also earlier we reported about Idia's ban and South Korea detaining top executives of large local cryptocurrencies. But this particular crash visible on the hourly chart is a result of someone's big selling order, which took the price below $6.600 support level amid low liquidity typical to Asian hours.
Another negative crypto story came from Mark Karpeles, former CEO of Mt. Gox, the infamous Japanese cryptocurrency exchange that busted in 2014 after thousands of Bitcoins were found missing from customers' accounts,
He held Q&A session on Reddit after it was revealed that Mt. Gox trustee had started selling company's Bitcoins to reimburse creditors.
Among other things, he claimed that he believed in blockchain technology, but not in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general.
“The technology is definitely here to stay, but Bitcoin may have trouble evolving and keeping up. I could be wrong about this. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” he said, adding that Ethereum is also “too untested for any kind of serious use".
Bitcoin technical picture
BTC/USD touched $6,530 low before recovering to $6,558. The drop below $6,600 - if it proves to be sustainable - may lead to further downside to $6,000 and $5,896 (February 6 low). On the upside, the price needs to get back to $6,900 (upper line of Andrew's pitchfork and mid-term downside trendline) as soon as possible to reduce the immediate selling pressure.
BTC/USD, the hourly chart
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