Bitcoin’s price sank on Friday, dipping below $95,000 before recovering slightly by early afternoon ET. The price currently sits at $95,400, down 3.2% on the day and down 15% from a month ago.
Bitcoin hit a six-month low Friday as the price of cryptocurrencies seemed to be largely tracking the stock market, which frequently happens. Markets opened lower on Friday before similarly rebounding. The S&P 500 is down 1.2% this month, according to CNN, and the Dow is down 0.6%.
Crypto traders often think of themselves as being part of a new financial system, independent of whatever is happening on Wall Street. But price fluctuations often mirror the Dow Jones and NASDAQ, and can often seem even more dramatic with wild swings.
Bitcoin traders often believe they can predict where prices are headed, leading to all kinds of theories that get picked up in the crypto press and applied to Bitcoin. The worrisome chart of the day seems to be the “classic five-phase Wyckoff Distribution,” which CoinTelegraph warns might mean Bitcoin could fall to as low as $86,000. They may as well be reading tea leaves and animal entrails, of course. But gamblers love to have a system.
Three weeks ago, CoinTelegraph ran an article about how Bitcoin could be on track to hit $200,000 by the end of this year. As in 2025. As in six weeks from now.
Bitcoin’s price hit an all-time high above $126,000 back on Oct. 6 but has struggled over the past month as investors pull their money out. Bitcoin magazine reports that roughly 815,000 BTC worth almost $79 billion has been sold by long-time holders in the past 30 days.
The price of other major cryptocurrencies was largely down on Friday, with Ethereum down 1.5% on the day (down 30% over the past three months) and XRP down 2.4% (down 27.4% over the past three months). Binance’s BNB seemed to be the exception to the daily trend, up 0.4% on the day and up 7.62% over the past three months. However, BNB is way down (23.4%) from the highs it reached a month ago, when Bitcoin was also doing well.
If the history of Bitcoin over recent years is any guide, the price is likely to track whatever the stock market does. If you think the U.S. economy is strong and it will continue to get better, you should probably put your money on Bitcoin going up. If you think the economy is weakening and stocks are likely to plunge in the future, you should probably bet on Bitcoin’s price going down.
And if you think that the underlying economy struggling could act like a house of cards to crypto and give us a Sam Bankman-Fried scenario, you really should not bank on Bitcoin going up. SBF got in trouble because he was playing with funny money and ran out of the real stuff to gamble with.
Nobody knows for certain what the future holds. The price of Bitcoin could go up or it could go down.
