Lots of FUD in the Air as BTC Dips

This week was full of FUD. Binance phishing, SEC statement, Japan cracking down on exchanges, MtGox selling, oh my. Bitcoin’s price dropped accordingly. This FUD overwhelmed the rather excellent news like the Coinbase index fund.

Fortunately, all this not so bad but it was bad enough to drop the price of Bitcoin and thus alts. News piled up just as Bitcoin was trying to break out of a key resistance level after almost forming a bullish inverted head and shoulders pattern; instead, it formed what looks more like a double top. See an analysis of this failed breakout. Was BTC going down anyway after failing to break out? Very likely. Was it going to drop that quickly and that far without all the FUD factors? Likely not.

You can see how cheery everyone is from titles like “Important Update on The Bitcoin Carnage! (BTC).” Click the image to see the analysis.

This is the way the crypto cookie crumbles. We get bullish stretches without bad news (or even good news), which allows Bitcoin to make headway. Then we get bearish stretches where a little FUD goes a long way to allowing the crypto bears to drop the price of crypto and short our beloved coins (and then to get liquidated when they get greedy; vicious cycle).

It is the normal ebb and flow (even folks like the MtGox trustee dumping BTC at key support and resistance levels is something we’ve seen before, frustratingly enough), but for anyone invested in crypto (for example, because they believe in the technology). It is also rather annoying to watch.

Annoyance and frustration aside, if you squint a little, you can see that all the news of the week had the same underlying message.

That message is, “As wider adoption of cryptocurrency occurs, states have begun to discuss regulating some of the worst practices in the crypto market (while letting many other aspects of the market grow naturally and mostly unchecked).” That is much better than the “states might ban it” message we used to hear. From a glass half full perspective, that is actually much more solid footing than we were standing on 6 months ago.

The bottom line being, the tears we shed today are over events that are going to pave the way for wider adoption, which is great from most perspectives.

Still, in the meantime, before the adoption and in the moment, Bitcoin is back to struggling to stay above $9k (yet again) while alts are trying to figure out how to respond to that.

Luckily, for those not zeroed in on tying their hopes and dreams to the price of cryptos always going up, there is yet another opportunity to buy into BTC under $10k and to buy alts relatively cheaply.

Zoomed out from that, and removed from the perspective of prices altogether, we find a host of great things to enjoy in crypto-land. For example, Bitcoin has come a long way in its transaction speeds increasing and transaction fees decreasing. Some of the top coins have been upgrading and updating their software (or are getting ready to). Also, the major exchanges seem to be stepping up to the plate to get ahead of government regs. The best of the best are likely to be the ones left standing, which is good from both a consumer and adoption perspective.

In other words, while we trod through the mud in terms of prices, tech is constantly leveling up.

The immediate here and now in terms of prices and FUD isn’t ideal, but the future of crypto looks bright.

We covered most of the FUD stories on our site (see the links above), but for those who want to read up on the Japan FUD, see Forbes Japan Shuts Down Two Cryptocurrency Exchanges, But It May Be Good News For The Industry. Note the “may be good for the industry” part. You could have added that line to the end of any of the FUD articles and have been correct, but that was lost in the moment, and panic ensued. Again, it’s just the way the cookie crumbles especially when it crumbles right after Bitcoin failed some major resistance levels.