Bitcoin price gained 12% in the 24 hours through Thursday to approach $10,000 once again, but analysts warn of strong resistance.
Big Targets And ‘Secular Bull Markets’
As Bitcoin added almost 40% in February from lows of under $6000 in some markets, Max Keiser led cautious optimism, celebrating what he called the end of “secular bull market.”
“$28,000 in play,” he wrote on Twitter late Wednesday, adding that he thought Bitcoin’s “break through $10,000 will usher in a new burst of news coverage and a fresh wave of buying.”
Altcoins broadly followed suit as BTC rose, with Litecoin making additional gains on the back of LitePay’s merchant acceptance announcement and hard fork speculation.
Against BTC, Litecoin took an unlikely opportunity to post a new all-time high of 0.025, making LTC easily the best-performing altcoin asset in the top 50 by market cap in BTC terms.
Others echoed positive sentiment similar to Keiser’s “healthy pullback,” with investor Alex Gurevich commenting Bitcoin had “established a very solid bottom.”
“If it clears $10,000 now it should have an easy path to $50,000 this year,” he wrote in a social media forecast Wednesday.
Vays Urges Cap On ‘Greed’
Not everyone was so buoyant. Building on warnings from February 9 about price resistance at or just above the $10,000 mark, Tone Vays noted the strong series of four-hour candles could signal a several-candle capitulation phase, and that “caution” was due in the current uptrend.
Summarizing his analysis on Twitter Thursday, he advised traders not to be “greedy.”
#Bitcoin(ers) should NOT Greedy Here, $BTCUSD 4hr Chart is about to be on a 9 Sell next Candle (Note: Intersection Missing). It's already in line with the 9 Sell on hourly & a potential 9 Sell on Daily at $10k [if we consider the random mid count price flip w/ a grain of salt] pic.twitter.com/aJHHW534wn
— Tone Vays [#Bitcoin] (@ToneVays) February 15, 2018
The impetus for Bitcoin’s new appeal is difficult to define. This week’s major announcement came from Microsoft, the computer giant pledging support for so-called Layer 2 scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network as the best way forward to enhance transaction capacity.
On-chain solutions, such as that used by hard fork Bitcoin Cash, are “degrading decentralization,” it claims.
What do you think about Bitcoin’s price outlook? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Twitter, Shutterstock