Commodity Blog

Bitcoin has enjoyed a rather expedient recovery after its latest drop-off to the $5,555.55 weekly low, in what amounted to a drawn-out 29.57% pullback, which ended up lasting almost 4 days. The nominal decline totaled $2,332.1, and began after last weeks $7,888 all-time high was achieved. A breach of the $5,101.36 monthly support appeared highly likely at the time, and the subsequent reaction of alternative crypto currencies, seemed to favor the former price level. At the time, market sentiment was being heavily orchestrated into this direction, in what felt like an endless barrage of mainstream and alternative media articles alike. Regardless, bitcoin has managed to bounce back, and has just recently broken above $7,000.

Interestingly enough, bitcoin cash enjoyed massive gains during the last breakdown of bitcoin’s market dominance. The BitFinex BCH/USD trading pair registered a new $521.21 November 8 weekly low (GMT 18:00), which practically coincided with the Bitstamp’s BTC/USD $7,888 November 8 all-time high (GMT 17:00). The inverse correlation could not have been more obvious, and an extremely violent run-up resulted in the $2,799 bitcoin cash all-time high. Understandably, this high has now become a focal point of many trading plans. Bitcoin cash has stabilized in the meantime, with the price of the spin-off currency primarily trading above and below $1,200 since then.

Bitcoin confirmation times severely oscillated all the while this was happening, and we are now used to having ludicrously long queues numbering 100,000 unconfirmed transactions at any one time, something that only previously occurred in the course of peak usage. Median confirmation times are up as well, while the mempool load appears to be slowly deteriorating downward. Miners are now freely switching between both chains; a simple chart comparison of the contending hash rates, elegantly illustrates this interdependence.

People think Bitcoin's mempool was spammed these last few days… Wrong. The mempool surge is from users rushing to send BTC to exchanges to panic-buy BCH, as evidenced by the waves of transactions PERFECTLY matching BCH's price boom.https://t.co/aXGRxOEhVL pic.twitter.com/z0PRYPnotZ

— Crypto Liberty (@alejoGaviria) November 14, 2017

On a similar note, SegWit block signaling has severely broken down, although the actual dispersal of backing for the project started months before the all-time high. Information on the definite percentage is contradictory at best, with values as low as 1% up to 11% in some cases.

Statement from @blockchain on Segwit and BCash. What other big companies managed in 3 weeks, Blockchain will try to manage within 7 months of activation… Also "market demand for BCash" lol. There are so many crypto projects with more skilled and active devs and bigger community pic.twitter.com/whlblYuvmi

— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) November 15, 2017

The jump above the $7,000 psychological level has also managed to stir up additional media attention. Two articles stood out among the crowded interwebs, the first was from Bloomberg, and covered trading activity on the Zimbabwe’s Golix exchange. The second was published by bitcoin.com, and was chiefly based around citing the thoughts of Alan Greenspan on bitcoin.

Zimbabwe latest:
– Military seizes power and detained 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe
– Mugabe is now confined at his home
– Zimbabwe stocks fell the most in 2 months
– Bitcoin climbed as much as 10% to $13,499 on the country’s Golix exchangehttps://t.co/fyJuUZdmKv pic.twitter.com/nJU3hPysds

— Bloomberg (@business) November 15, 2017

Bitcoin entered into a conventional reversal from the $7,888 all-time high on November 8 (GMT 17:00). The descending channel came to a halt at the $5,555.55 weekly low on November 12 (GMT 06:00). After a smaller upward bounce to the $6,485.12 November 12 daily high (GMT 11:00), we again witnessed a retest of prior lows, this time at the $5,639 November 12 daily low (GMT 23:00). The turnaround continued afterwards, and the price of bitcoin was blasting above $7,100 at the time of writing.

If you have any questions and comments on bitcoin today, use the form below to reply.