Bitcoin - Changing Lanes to $14k

Updated
Ahoy, it's Maritime Mike here with a take on Bitcoin

I was rather unhappy with my last chart and I hesitated to share this one due to my own indecision recently, however I’m throwing my hat in the ring and calling 14K Bitcoin by July.

Fundamental wise market sentiment is good, there is some excellent bullish news coming out on institutional interest in Bitcoin and we are seeing a general opening up of the market. In short, the worst case scenario isn't happening and aside from the minor ERC20 token bug news I don't see this rally being dampened.

We talk a lot about whales moving price and this is important to bear in mind here, a lot of energy went into taking us this high and I find it illogical at this stage for the big players to kick us down to panic selling levels as the cost of picking us back up potentially outweighs the reward for taking us higher and selling into a fever pitch of FOMO buying, the way we've seen time and time again.

So where are we? From here it is clear without me running over the indicators that we need to blow of some steam and retrace to our support zone, where after some sideways movement inside our ichimoku cloud I expect us to turn around and knock on the door again of the resistance around the $9,800 area. We could bust straight through this, but I don't believe we will, there is hesitation from buyers around this level of resistance that I think will stall us, but following a retrace and strong bounce from a high low on our uptrend will see us through.

There is a lot of money sat on the shelf at the moment and I dare to wager some of it is going to enter the market around the 10k level once we confirm the support around $9,800. From there I believe we will continue our fractal journey up to our old friend the $11,400 resistance. We should be quite topped out by here and this will be interesting, however I believe once support is confirmed we are going to see a lot of money entering this market. Upon breaking $11,400 we will see a large influx of money break into the market as this will be official bull market all have been waiting for. It is here I would expect a sell off to gradually begin, with the big players selling into the buying frenzy.

This would fit very nicely for a peak around 14K by July followed by a sharp correction that will eventually take us into an end of year rally.

The above is my scenario taken into account where I perceive we will stall due to psychological price barriers which will draw this rally out further, however I do want to give credit for a lot of the inspiration behind my thinking from this great piece of analysis, it is far above the bar of anything I could do and I recommend you check it out if you haven't already > https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/iOqHUQKi-After-Much-Thought-Looks-Like-Wyckoff-Distribution-Schematic-1/

Alt coins are looking great at the moment and I will be coming back to updating and posting more calls. We have see a retracement which followed Bitcoin of course, but this was much needed and will be short lived.

Throw me a like if you agree and let me know what you think

Thanks for reading
Note
We are retracing nicely, 2 important things we are seeing;

Alt coin strength - Alts are showing great resilience and there’s some lovely looking charts out there, money staying in alt coins is always a show of increasing confidence in the market

Selling hesitation - whilst failure to break resistance shows hesitation from buyers, equally can be said on the sell side volume, a good indicator of sentiment change.

I personally believe we have slightly further to retrace over the next couple of days but bullish signals are already starting to form so I certainly wouldn’t bank on the exact moment we turn around and re-test the resistance
Note
A quick update on where things stand today as I see it

We can see on our 4h chart that we've had a bullish divergance and RSI is showing some good upwards momentum increase, the daily chart also looks good and we have the possibility of breaking $9,800 area earlier than I expected.

However, just in my personal view i am unsure if we are ready to break it, as I menioned above we had these signals brewing yesterday but it is difficult to say if buyer hesitation will stall us.

In an ideal scenario I would like us to move up to kiss our resistance then see some sideways action just below it, giving us a temporary higher low and thus giving us the confidence to smash through that resistance and confirm it as support.

A final unrelated ramble, you often see the same old 'stages of market bubbles' being cycled around with the old 'despair, return to the mean' etc. Personally I think it's a gross over simplification of market psychology, but there is a grain of truth in there. We can characterise late 2017 as the 'it'll never stop going up' followed by the 'it'll never stop going down' after it. We seem to have now entered more of a disbelief phase where every movement is put down to market manipulation or the vague definition of a whale moving the price.

I want to be clear that I personally think this is at best a misunderstanding on the volume needed to control Bitcoin price to such a large extent, or at worst a lazy excuse. Something that I came across earlier is this article that I think gives an interesting perspective https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-whale/

Thanks for reading :)
Note
Hi there,

I just wanted update how things are progressing in my view, I have been quiet with updates recently, however equally I also feel comfortable with how things have been moving in line with my above prediction so there hasn't been too much to say.

So looking at the daily we can see that we are not quite done retracing but action is coming soon, for me it isn't a question of 'if' we can break 10k it is simply when. As I mentioned above it just didn't appear we had the conviction before but as we did not drop as low as we likely could have, I think we are likely to break it sooner than I originally thought.

Below is just an updated chart better highlighting our key resistances and also a short term path I feel is likely due to the remaining cautiously optimistic sentiment we are seeing in the market, overall I am still happy with my original chart but I feel some timings may be brought forward so this is just a side-note.

snapshot

The weekly view is still saying we are yet to get cracking in full and I am starting to come around to 14K being a modest target with $15,500 currently on my mind, however it is still too early to say at this time as we have many hurdles and an inevitable small correction to jump first within the next month.

So to sum up where we are, all signals are showing us we need a couple more days of retracing before we are ready for our next leg up. The fact our support around 9k has held so well is very bullish indeed but we are about to approach the most important level; breaking 10k psychologically will be a fantastic milestone, however a solid close above the $11,500 range is the real prize!
Note
We are looking good

On th 4H timeframe we can see our RSI is hinting a return to positive momentum, our Stoch RSI is oversold like crazy and our MACD is getting ready to level and diverge.

This retracement might not seem it at a first glance but is in my mind a very positive display of sentiment, sellers are losing conviction which can be seen in the decreasing sell side volume and now the next 24 hours will play out will give us a clearer picture of whether we are going to make a strong movement up or have a sideways cool off period
Note
Bitcoin is sticking to my original idea and ignoring my update above it seems, timing could have been better here and there but all key levels have held so I'm feeling comfortable with the progress.

If you press play on the above chart we have now perfectly hit my second uptrend channel which should take us past $9,800. Let's see how the next day pans out.

Indeed the daily chart is showing plenty of room and we just need a good pick up of positive momentum and Bitcoin is ready to take the next leg up.

The updated chart I posted above can show as an interesting lesson on not getting drawn into the smaller picture, this is a key issue I have with some of the more popular trading view characters providing a 'live' update, it is all too easy to get drawn into short movements and mistake these flags for the bigger picture.
Note
Ahoy

I have made some alterations as I realised my original trendline was tad skewed, also to conform to my usual Heikin Ashi candles to see past all the volatility;

snapshot

So you can see above the path I expect us to take, once again I am left wondering why some of the popular folk on this site seem to only think in dramatic terms of 'moon or crash'. As less popular as it may be, they do not seem to be aware of the other options available.

So to sum up what I am reading from this chart;

1. No, we do not have any indication for a sudden crash down to 6k, 5k, $3,452.52 or whatever it is meant to be now. We are seeing a lack of momentum and a lot of hesitation from buyers and sellers but combined with a lot of other signs in the market as a whole I am leaning towards a more bullish scenario.

2. It is unlikely that we are about to take off on a parabolic curve, the ground work just isn't there yet. Now ask me again in a month’s time and we may be looking different but at this moment in time we need a return to confidence for the market and this view seems to be rushing things in my mind.

My opinion is that we are heading sideways and upwards, aside from the indicators signalling some sideways action with a bias to the upside I am factoring in the general market sentiment we are seeing of cautious recovering. For example, whilst order books are not reliable to a large degree when it comes to the huge block order, the overall volume can be very telling and on several small coins we are seeing the buy side recovering which in my mind is one of many signals we can use to indicate a return of confidence in the market.

A final parting thought I will leave you with today is the monthly chart;

snapshot

Take a look at how our RSI has levelled out in bullish territory, how oversold our SMI is and our flattened but still up trending MACD. Now I realise that this is a very lagging way to be looking at the market but longer views do have their place and this picture is certainly not a bearish one for 2018.

Thanks for reading
Note
My latest thoughts on where we are heading;

snapshot

I am still yet to be convinced of a larger move down past $7,200, there isn't too much to say other than that! When we take a look at our weekly chart I am not convinved we are ready for a full fledged reveresal quite yet either however we are currently oversold on both the 1 day and 3 day perspectives so we aren't miles away.

Here is the weekly, I will be watching with popcorn to see how we react when we run into the cloud

snapshot
Note
*HIGHLY SPECULATIVE IDEA*

snapshot

It just fits very nicely with the indicators and also the neck of the pattern.Now this seems a bit too easy to me so I am sceptical, however I want to put this out there.

I haven't been very active on tradingview as of late, partly as not had the time, however also it's got to be said the amount of sh*t on this platform is astounding and a distraction.

My best advice is not to follow any traders closely and refer only to these ideas when you are at a loss or need some inspiration, a lot of damage is done by p*ss poor analysis by 'top traders' that are simply being bumped up by faked accounts (LNE is the most obvious example you can find of this, just check some of the comments and note how many instances these accounts have never commented or followed anything else before).

My point is there are some great bits of analsis put out there but it gets mixed up with the poor work, so all in all I think it can cause you to doubt your own instincts and TA so avoid checking when you can

Cheers for reading :)
Note
Ok so that was a very speculative idea but I still have a feeling we could be attempting to form a right shoulder either now or from the next bounce around $7,300. The latter would make more sense, but that is exactly why I am curious at what happens next.

I am deeply suspicious of price movement today as it has all seemed too obvious and that makes me uneasy. A strong stop hunting move back toward $7,600 is exactly the kind of shakeout that seems believable. I can already see the posts shouting that the inverted head and shoulder is still in play and we are going to $8,100
Note
If we don’t rally past this point we have our right shoulder
Note
Not much volume follow through yet + bearish crab on short time frame + head and shoulders still in play = proceed with caution
Note
I will be putting together a new take on recent movements hopefully today as feel this post has become a little unfocussed, this seems like a good time as we are closing into a new phase.

However as just a cap off, to be clear I am still bullish that 14K can be reached this month, as crazy as that might sound right now. This being said, I do not like this movement one little bit!

- We just had a very strong rejection at our converging downward trendline
- H&S pattern is looking more and more likely
- The volume profile looks bad, the bounce itself was low volume and there is yet to be any follow through, the bounce was also followed by a spike in selling volume suggesting little confidence in this move
- We are yet to re-test our trendline, ok this is not essential and we shouldn't get too bound by this rule, however considering every other sign of weakness it would be very nice to have some confidence that the downside has been tested properly.
- The below is our MACD on the 30 minute time frame... think it speaks for itself

snapshot

Of course a sudden large spike in volume will change the game completely, but just taking a general overview of the situation as of right now, I don't like it.
Note
I forgot to add that my target for the initial drop is about $7,290

What happens next will depend on how we react to this level
Note
I do hate TradingView posts that give the options of ‘it can go up or it can go down’, since that is completely useless information to share

However we are currently at a crossroads and this lack of volume is spooking me a little as it would only take one strong impulse in either direction

The scenario I see now is one more upwards thrust, should this break resistance then we could be heading up for a short while first, if it gets capped like all of the other attempts I don’t see this structure holding another dip
Note
Again, no volume to follow through the small move we just saw but we are currently suspended in mid air

I am having a difficult time seeing us busting through that resistance on this lethargic rally, the weekly charts also still looks like cr*p
Note
Righto, so while i'm throwing together a new post I just wanted to share this;

The below is the 2 paths that I can see Bitcoin taking, I expect us to hit $7,760 before turning back down and then whatever happens next when we test the rising trend line will determine which path we choose.

snapshot
Note
Updated with third path

In order of likelyhood I am

Path B - Most likely in my view as a high lower would be a confidence boost for another attempt
Path A - A serious consideration considering the extremely weak volume we are seeing
path C - I would be very surprised if we made it this high unless the volume outlook drastically changed

snapshot
Beyond Technical AnalysisBitcoin (Cryptocurrency)BTCUSDChart PatternsCryptocurrencyTrend Analysis

Related publications

Disclaimer