Bitcoin Forum

Willy Woo, a cryptocurrency researcher and respected investor, has said that the 2018 Bitcoin correction will not turn out to be like the 2014 slump, when the price of Bitcoin dropped 90 percent and remained in a low price range for several years.

In essence, Woo stated that the structure of the cryptocurrency exchange market in 2018 is significantly different than four years ago.

2014 Vs. 2018: What is Different?

In 2014, Bitcoin suffered the worst correction in its history, dropping by 90 percent and remaining in a low price range for several years until 2017. Based on historical evidence and the tendency of Bitcoin to take a year or two to properly recover from its major corrections, some experts have suggested that Bitcoin will not be able to rebound speedily by the end of 2018.

Woo emphasized that in 2014, the correction of Bitcoin was intensified by the bankruptcy of Mt. Gox, the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange that had complete dominance over the Bitcoin market.

At the time, Mt. Gox handled 90 percent of BTC trades in the global market with extremely poor internal management systems and virtually non-existent security measures.

Consequently, as Mt. Gox experienced a billion dollar hacking attack and declared bankruptcy, the cryptocurrency market fell and BTC struggled to recover for two years thereafter.

However, throughout 2018, a growing number of institutional investors have continued to show growing demand for cryptocurrencies as an emerging asset class and the digital asset industry has seen the efforts of companies like Coinbase and Gemini to lure in investors in the broader financial market to Bitcoin.

More importantly, the New York Stock Exchange, Microsoft, and Starbucks launched a joint initiative called Bakkt in order to improve the usability and adoption of cryptocurrencies worldwide.

One of the first initiatiives Bakkt has led in August is assisting major cryptocurrency exchanges in finding a trusted price formation of digital assets, which experts believe will drastically increase the probability of an ETF approval.

“Another view on a long recovery. Worth bearing in mind 2014-2015 was detoxing from a MtGox collapse; traded 90% of world volume. Plus 1/8 of all BTC stolen plus Willybot pumping prices. Systemically, Bitcoin 2018 is much healthier than Bitcoin 2014,” Woo said.

Read more: https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/27/prominent-analyst-bitcoin-is-significantly-healthier-in-2018-than-2014-optimistic/

the 2011 correction was worse, dropping by about 94%. i wasn't around, but it's much more brutal looking than 2014 from looking at the chart.


this is totally over-exaggerated. gox didn't have 90% of BTC trading volume, lol! it's funny, every time i hear these claims about the dominance of gox, the % of global volume they supposedly had gets higher and higher. :D

they maybe had 90% of "western" trading volume (compared to bitstamp, btc-e). but i'm not sure about that either. gox was only averaging ~200k volume per week at the end of 2013! btc-china alone did more than half that volume, and i believe huobi was more prominent than BTCC at that time. and to me, it really felt like china was fueling the bubble, not gox. and this was years before the volumizer bots came around.

also, just compare gox's volume between april 2013 and november 2013. between those two bubbles, gox lost lots of volume to other exchanges. by 2014, there is no way in hell they controlled anywhere near 90% of the market! probably a good deal less than 50%.....

I thought exactly the same when I read the article.
All it takes is one guy that reports a bogus number and the other
"media outlets" spread the misinformation.

Most so called cryptocurrency journalists didn´t even know
Bitcoin when MtGox was still operational and therefore it doesn´t really
come as a surprise that they have no clue about the MtGox
business.

Was ready to dive in deeper but when I saw from your post that he had to mention Mt Gox and thought Bakkt was the more important aspect... Woo's just another analyst reaching for low-lying fruit.

I do think Bitcoin's significantly healthier this year than any other year before. 2017 will always be the watershed year - the year when people spoke about civil war, about BCH splitting the community, SegWit fears and China crackdown. All of those combined only served to fuel that climb to prominence and all those hurdles overcome to put confidence in Bitcoin - and by proxy, crypto - at an all time high.

Price is one factor, people talk about dominance and all those market aspects, which I think is smoke and mirrors, but even so, this year's corrections, with June's brief low around 5800 a stark reminder of how resilient and healthy Bitcoin's market value is. Corrections, if they don't kill, only make it healthier.

If super/quantum computing, government regulation, internal politics, altcoin dominance, etc. all seemed plausible threats in 2017, then 2018 is when Bitcoin laid the smack down on all these and has emerged stronger, more secure than ever, more advanced than ever, more efficient than ever.

Best of all, it's far, far from done.

There's definitely truth in this statement. In 2014 Bitcoin was still considered to be unreliable or a tool for the dark web. Today Bitcoin is so much more mainstream and acceptable in society, it's definitely in a better position today than in 2014.

That is because bitcoin was not that well-known back in 2014. It was an utter tool and a payment method for people to buy things from the darknet. But nowadays, bitcoin and the blockchain technology have been introduced to more people. So, more people are using them for good ans legal purposes unlike then. And that is why it is now healthier than before which it raises many questions; will it continue to be healthier? And will criminals stop using bitcoin as a method of payment?

The same case is now: we don't know exactly how much the OTC crypto market is.

Well, I don't think anyone should be making price predictions, but health predictions are a lot easier.

BTC is vastly stronger than it was in 2014. Mining's off the scale, ever more services are popping along, more people own it, it's shrugged off BCH, S2X and more, Segwit and LNs are rolling.

Will that stop a price shitshow? Probably not. But people who can look beyond the end of their willy should sit back and appreciate what's brewing.

Most of the people who entered this industry in 2017/2018 don't know anything about MtGox either, so they'll take these news articles at face value because these news outlets are their only sources of information.

On the other hand, what rookies pull out of this article is that Bitcoin is doing better than before. Regardless of how obvious it may seem to people here, it's a pretty big deal for these rookies.

That's what makes the OTC market so strong. People aren't supposed to know who's exchanging Bitcoin to fiat and vice versa, and how much they are exchanging, simply because it's none of anyone's business.

I agree that this is obvious for those of us that have been in the game for a while but I think this article was more to put things in perspective for all the sentiment we see out there about how the sky might be falling...when it fact Bitcoin has had much rougher days and bounced back stronger than ever from them.

The idea that criminals are using Bitcoin is a bit outdated now. They're probably using other cryptocurrencies instead of Bitcoin. So yes, Bitcoin will continue to be healthier now.