Bitcoin Price Top Forecast: Bitcoin bulls lick wounds after major sell-off

• Bitcoin stays in red, altcoins are losing ground as well.
• The market is driven by Facebook's Libra story.
• The short-term price recovery is limited by $11,000.

The cryptocurrency market has lived through a dreadful week as Bitcoin (BTC), and all major altcoins crashed below several important support levels. The sentiments turned sour amid regulatory scrutiny towards Facebook's Libra project. 

The total capitalization of all digital assets in circulation slumped from $332 billion to $249 billion to the lowest level since the beginning of June. The majority of altcoins are nursing double-digit losses on a week-on-week basis, while Bitcoin is down over 10% in recent seven days.

What's going on in the market

The passing week has been full of turbulent events; however, Facebook's ambitious Libra project took center stage and influenced the market sentiments. 

Regulators and governments increase their pressure

US Senators grilled Calibra's CEO David Marcus asking him all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Marcus promised that the company would satisfy all regulatory requirements and vowed that the coin wouldn't be issued until all matters would be settled. However, Senators seemed to stay unconvinced as they compared Facebook with a toddler with a box of matches. They noted that the company had a long history of ethical violations. However, the Senators seem to be well informed about the benefits of the distributed ledger technologies. They were not inclined to ban the innovations in the financial services, as they have the potential to lower payment transaction costs, facilitate access to capital.

Meanwhile, the finance ministers of the Group of Seven brought the crypto-related issues to the top of their agenda, saying that they may pose systemic risks to the global financial system. German's Finance minister also expressed a cautious approach.

IMF's change of heart

The experts of the International Monetary Fund believe that the cryptocurrency assets might replace fiat money and make traditional bank deposits outdated. The recently published report revealed several scenarios of how digital currencies and stablecoins can disrupt banking systems. 

Bitpoint hack attack

The Japanese cryptocurrency exchange that lost $32 million to hack attack. The incident happened at the end of the previous week. The exchange revealed that the attackers stole money from Bitpoint's hot wallet in five cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) и Ripple (XRP). Later the exchange managed to get back $2.3 million. The exchange operator promised to compensate users for losses.

BTC/USD, 1D chart

Bitcoin has had another a troublesome week as the price of the most popular cryptocurrency touched the area crashed from above $11,375 to as low as $9,080. While BTC/USD managed to recover towards $10,350 by the time of writing, the upside momentum remains weak as the market participants are wary of the growing uncertainty on the market.

It is worth noting that despite the decline, Bitcoin's market share remained relatively high at 65.8%. It means that the recent sell-off has been more harmful to the altcoins.

Meanwhile, a strong sell-off below $11,000 has damaged the mid-term technical picture for BTC/USD. While the long-term bullish trend remains intact, we will need to see a recovery above the said area to mitigate the immediate bearish pressure.

Looking technically, $11,000 area creates strong resistance that stopped the sell-off on several occasions. It means that the bulls are going to have a hard time pushing Bitcoin's price above this barrier. However, once it is out of the way, the recovery is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $12,000 and $12,700 (this resistance area is created by a confluence of the upper boundaries of both weekly and daily Bollinger Bands).

On the downside, a sustainable move below $10,000 handle will bring the short-term sellers back to the market. Once the price is below this handle, the bearish momentum will gain traction and bring $9,000 back into focus. Local support is also created at $9,450 (the lower line of 1-day Bollinger Band). 

Considering that the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on a daily chart is starting to revert to the downside, we might expect that the bear's case scenario will play out.

The Forecast Poll of experts worsened since the previous week. The expectations on all time-frames deteriorated significantly with the majority of experts forecasting Bitcoin's price below $11,000 on weekly and monthly timeframes.

 

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