Background & News
Life around Bitcoin (BTC) isn't boring recently. Fundamentally and technology-wise nothing changed except that Pieter Wuille finally wrote a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) for the implementation of Schnorr signatures, which is one of the most exciting developments since SegWit and Lightning Network.
Schnorr signatures are a form of digital signatures that would alter the way users generate cryptographic keys that are needed to transact and to hold Bitcoins. The new signature scheme could be deployed via a Soft-fork, the same way SegWit was included, and benefits include: sent data would be better compressed thus consuming less space, bandwidth requirements would also be reduced, increased privacy, CoinJoin type mixers would benefit as well and tx spam attacks will get less efficient.
Recent news also included CBOE filing an ETF request with regulators, which is something that comes up every year, but now since futures brokerages like CME and CBOE have been supporting Bitcoin we might just have what it takes to achieve it.
Additionally, we also had news regarding Malta and the Bermudas and their final push to regulate DLTs and ICOs.
Chart
The BTC/USD chart from BitStamp shows us that Bitcoin successfully completed an inverse Head & Shoulder pattern with breaking the first resistance line (red). The second resistance (red) is sitting at a critical point as there is a multi-month falling wedge (pink) that is crossing it right around the current date. Even though the RSI (blue) indicator is high at this point, it is still not oversold on the daily view.
Watching Bitcoin break out of the falling wedge and start a new market cycle would make us confident that we might reach new highs in 2018, but there seems to be a lack of volume for the break-out.
A critical point worth watching now would be the $7650 mark, if that breaks a well timed long could net quite a good profit for a trader, but in case Bitcoin gets denied on the wedge, we might first re-visit the lower local resistance line at $6800.
Worth to note that many Altcoin charts currently drew A&E (Adam & Eve) bottoms before rising with BTC, which could indicate that we are finally moving upwards.