The FUD is in the air as the scary possibility of a coin-split has once again resurfaced. Current MC= $85.2B
Yesterday major exchanges such as Poloniex released statements that they will most likely not be supporting the chain split if and when it does occur therefore you should withdraw your funds from any third party platform to ensure that you will in fact be able to claim both coins. Apparently the currency "Bitcoin Cash" has gained some momentum in the last week and is looking like it could be a real possibility. I am going to hold my coins just in case so I can see what happens and possibly receive two coins as a result of the fork.
Naturally this caused a backlog of transactions in the Bitcoin network, which can only handle approximately 3 transactions per second... https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@hotsauceislethal/coinbase-delays-bitcoin-network-backlogged . Of course I happened to buy and then send a sizeable amount of BTC right before this happened and since I was using their android app I was unaware of the network issues (and couldn't set a custom fee either). It took my transaction nearly 7.5 hours to finally go through. This backlog on top of the renewed concerns about a split lead to a hefty sell off with BTC down over $300 in 24 hours.
All hope is not lost however as any resulting split could lead to two entirely separate currencies both with some intrinsic value. Look at what happened to Ethereum last year when it was hacked for example: The price went from the $20 range down to about $12 directly after the hack and then after the fork ETH was dropped to around $7-8 while Ethereum Classic (ETC) was devalued entirely. More than a year later ETC is trading almost as high as ETH was originally and now ETH is STILL 20x higher than its high last summer.
In today's price forecast we are looking to recover some of those losses from yesterday but a sluggish market is holding us back. We will most likely push back towards $2550 in the short term and might even have the strength to go all the way back to $2650 range by the end of the day if anything recovers. However if more investors initiate a panic sell then we will see a pull back to $2200-$2300 before any support steps in.
Remember that sometimes whales will take advantage of the market's fears and put in a large sell order to tip off the stop-limit orders. This triggers a domino-like effect where sell order after sell order is dumped to stop the losses on someone's holdings. We saw this happen in a very dramatic fashion when Ethereum flash crashed down to almost NOTHING in a matter of seconds on some exchanges a month ago. Additionally day traders or casual investors might see this happening in real time and decide to sell in order to pick up at a cheaper price once the market bottoms out. This leads to a market massacre and what we are seeing now is all red!
Likely Scenarios:
- PANIC SELL from noobs causing us to drop another $200 or so by day's end due to FUD over coin split
- BTC remains lethargic, as investor confidence is bruised, and holds steady in the $2400-2500 range
- BTC recovers some of its losses but only up to the $2550 mark before taking another downswing.
TLDR Version:
There is a market reversal underway so beware of more losses before the we can find the much needed support to bring it back up. The market is extremely fragile right now so any more bad news could send it down even further to $2200 zone. IF we do see any recovery it will most likely be to $2550 or even $2600 but its not looking so good.
Price Target:
$2520
*Never invest more than you are willing to lose and always do your own research before making any investment decisions.