The cryptocurrency market is as ever topsy turvy, there is as ever volatility in the market and the only thing predictable about the market is the unpredictability of it, but indeed the unpredictability can be the predictable if you study the market for long enough, hard enough and keenly enough.
There are gainers and losers in terms of market movement and there is money to be made if you are disciplined and devote enough time to study the market.
There is an aggressive contrarian run on the market at the moment with a bull market running alongside a bear market.
A bull run or a bull market as you may be aware is a term used to describe a market that is on the rise and is expected to continue to rise; conversely, a bear market or a bear run describes a market filled with pessimism leading to a plummet in price.
Now, I said earlier that the market is on an aggressive contrarian run, what does this mean, what do I mean?
If you look at the top end of the market you would think that the market is experiencing a bull run, Bitcoin certainly is, threatening to break through the $5000 ceiling and surge on from there, and the coins around it are certainly not being left behind with Ethereum and Ripple etc. all in the green and thrusting upward.
So, a cursory glance at the top end of the market would give the impression that the marketplace is experiencing a bull run, but if you look further down the chart at the lower cap alt coins at the bottom half of the table, the bull run quickly turns into a bear market, virtually all the alternative coins with lower capitalisation are in the red.
But why is this?
The reason is quite simple, Bitcoin is about to experience what is called “a fork”, a fork happens when a spin-off coin is created off an existing coin, this usually happens when there is a disagreement on how the coin is being developed or the pace at which development is taking place, if an agreement cannot be reached a fork takes place, and this is about to happen with Bitcoin.
A spinoff coin called “Bitcoin Gold” is about to be created later on this month, now when a spinoff coin is created, holders of the original coin are gifted an equal amount of the new coin that they hold of the original coin. I.e. if you own ten Bitcoins you are gifted ten Bitcoin Gold.
This in effect translates as free money and this explains to a large extent why the price of Bitcoin is rising and the price of alt coins are falling.
People are stockpiling Bitcoins to position themselves for the free Bitcoin Gold that is to come, they are using all the money that they can lay their hands on to buy Bitcoins and part of the money that they can lay their hands on includes selling off their stake in alt coins and piling the money into Bitcoins.
And this really explains the contrarian market, bull at the top bear at the bottom, but with a contrarian market though comes a contrarian strategy, I have decided to buck the trend and pile my money into the alt coins. Dumb or genius idea? You pay your money and take your chances, heads you win tails you lose.