Bitcoin Weekly Forecast: Black Friday injects some volatility into the market

• Bitcoin regains ground amid volatile trading conditions.
• Upbit hack had only limited impact on the market
• FXStreet's Forecast Poll shows obvious bearish bias.

Bitcoin (BTC) has a good chance to stop the losing streak on weekly charts. The coin recovered from the recent low of $7,325 to trade at $7,780 at the time of writing.  Whether the market has reached the bottom, or more sell-off is in store, the time and the illiquid holiday markets will tell. 

Currently, BTC/USD has gained over 3% since the previous Friday, but it is still down 19% on a month-to-month basis.

From the long-term perspective, BTC/USD returned to the area above 61.8% Fibo retracement for the upside move from $3,226 low to $13924 high ($7,350) and broke both SMA50 (Simple Moving Average) and SMA100 on a weekly chart ($7,257 and $7,478 respectively) and  This is a positive signal; however, we still need a confirmation that the breakthrough is real. 

All three indicators have been limiting keeping Bitcoin bears in check since the beginning of May. They survived multiple breakthrough attempts and proved their importance for the long-term technical developments.  Thus, a sustainable move below the area of $7,350-$7,000 will bring the sellers back to the market and create a pre-condition for an extended decline towards $5,000 reinforced by SMA200 (Simple Moving Average) on a weekly chart.

On the upside, $7,800 is a short-term target that separates us from a stronger recovery towards $8,000. Once it is out of the way, the upside is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $8,400 (SMA50 daily) and $8,600 (50% Fibo retracement for the above-said movement).

BTC/USD, the weekly chart

The fundamental developments have been pretty irrelevant for the price moves except for a bunch of high profile events. However, their influence was short-lived and shallow, as well.

Here we hacked again

The South Korean cryptocurrency exchange fell victim to hackers who got away with ETH and BTC coins worth $40 million. The exchange confirmed the incident and stopped all operations, including deposits and withdrawals of funds. Once the system registered suspicious transactions, the exchange moved all funds from hot wallets to cold storages; however, the harm had been already done.

Upbit vows to compensate the affected users for losses. Meanwhile, the bad guys have already started splitting the loot. According to the data provided by Twitter bot Whale alert, about 109,000 ETH coins have been transferred to four different wallets. Also, hackers allegedly created five additional addresses to split the stolen amount into smaller parts and thus hide the track. 

Notably, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance promised to monitor the funds and freeze suspicious coins once they are transferred to the platform. Obviously, the attackers won't have any luck is they attempt to dispose of the coins at Binance. Though they have plenty of choices as other exchanges have refrained from hard and fast promises so far, while Huobi stated that it would not freeze any funds. 

Upnbit is the seventh cryptocurrency exchange hacked in 2019 and a reminder to all crypto holders that their coin is only as safe as they take care of them. Being your own bank has its perils.

A year of losses

The cryptocurrency market is in better shape than a year ago as most of the coins are in a green zone on a year-to-year basis. However, the aggregated losses of the industry are growing. Thus, according to the latest research performed by CipherTrace, hackers and scammers stole about $.4 billion in cryptocurrency equivalent since the beginning of 2019. This is more than twice as much as in 2018.  

The experts noted that improved IT infrastructure and security measures forced the scammers and hackers to exploit human failures. Thus they registered the growing number of exit scams and insider trading amid the decrease of outright hacks. 

Read more details here

China and Russia send warnings.

Both countries have been making noises about the cryptocurrency industry this week. Thus Russian authorities, including the Central Bank of Russia, supported the idea of a blanket ban on cryptocurrency payments. According to the regulator, digital money will never be considered as a legal tender on the territory of Russia. It means they cannot be used to pay for goods and services.

China published a report on financial stability, where it stated that 173 cryptocurrency trading platforms had been closed without any significant risks or consequences. The country's leaders confirmed their aggressive stance towards cryptocurrency trading and emphasized that focus on the development of blockchain technologies does not cover digital assets.

The  Forecast Poll of experts worsened since the previous week. The expectations on all timeframes turned from bullish to bearish (on weekly and monthly timeframes) and neutral (on quarterly timeframe), while the average price forecasts stay below 8,000. However, the overview chart shows that average targets short-term timeframes improved. The 1-quarter average forecast is down from 7800 last week to 7520 this one, which means that analysts are less optimistic about Bitcoin's long-term fate.

 

---