Bitcoin Forum

Tom Lee: Bitcoin Price Starting to Reverse, 2 Catalysts Will Drive it Higher in 2018
Throughout 2018, Bitcoin has continued to record lower highs, testing major resistance levels at $10,000, $8,000 and $7,000. According to Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, the stability of Bitcoin at $6,000 regardless of its lower highs is optimistic.

In early 2018, Fundstrat emphasized in a report that the $6,000 level will likely be held by Bitcoin in the mid-term because it is the breakeven point for miners. That means, miners that utilize electricity and mining equipment to verify transactions on the Bitcoin network can still generate some profit if the price of Bitcoin stays above the $6,000 level.

Lee explained on Bloomberg that the stability of BTC at the $6,000 mark and two major catalysts awaiting BTC in the year end could push the price of BTC up substantially within the next two months.
https://www.ccn.com/tom-lee-bitcoin-price-starting-to-reverse-2-catalysts-will-drive-it-higher-in-2018/

Ok ... but what if investor confidence drops?  What if supply outweighs demand by a ten fold?  What if, what if ... You know that a ETF isn't going to be approved in 2018, so scratch that.  What other catalysts are there?  Lightning certainly isn't going to be mainstream in 2018.

A few years ago, when Bitcoin continuously dropped, miners got angry because at 200-250$ it was not a business anymore to mine. Some have shut down. Bitcoin price didn't care and still dropped / stayed down for a while.

What I want to tell is:
1. I am not sure that 6k is miners' break even. A bit high, even though I know that the difficulty rose a lot. I've heard even numbers like 1k. I guess that the truth is somewhere between 1k and 6k, unfortunately I don't know where. However, there may still be quite some room until the break even point.
2. Reaching the break even point doesn't automatically mean the trend is going to reverse, just like that. It needs an extra punch.

I don't say that the trend should not become bullish. I just say that this attempt for reasoning it is flawed.

Then the market turns even more bearish. I personally don't think we should be searching for a quick fix just so we can see another bull run at the year's end.

Custodians seem to be really starting to gear up though, so they may know something about the situation that we don't. I'm not sure how I feel about institutional money flooding in, but if it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

bitcoin has been building up towards that reversal for a while now. ever since the price reached the bottom and stayed there a while the accumulation slowly started and continued to this day. some investors are still uncertain which means the rise has not yet started. but it is on the way.


we should already be at that break-even point. not because price went to $6k and stopped but because it went there and stayed there. so if that point was above $6k then addition of more miners brings it back down to $6k (which seems to be the case here) if it was below $6k then miners would have left and it would have reached balance again.

wow it's a good new. i hope bitcoin can reach $20000 again. then i can sold and take my money a gain ::) ::)

I have also have been having same issues with this. these days people seem to be so excited to hear "institutional money" will be coming in maybe because they only see the part saying "money coming in" and don't think who is behind that money.
I do believe that this can even increase the manipulation hence the volatility of bitcoin specially since the market is unregulated it would be easy to manipulate it.

That's where I beg to differ.... Will Bitcoin Price Reverse ?

Take Bitcoins past... It has had like what ? 4 big price spikes ?  Almost all of them except the last one was due to whale price manipulations ...

The last surge in December 2017 was when mainstream media started covering Bitcoin and a "lot" of fresh people started looking into it...

Now there's no more Sheep to slaughter ... Much harder to manipulate price (or atleast people are aware of it)...

Where will the bull run come from?

If everything is so, our desired profit will soon be waiting for us !!  You can go to the store and buy Lambo)) ;D

Same opinion here.  I think we're past the point of no return in terms of institutional money flooding in.  I don't think it's an "IF" anymore.  Just a matter of time.

Why don't you write in your own words the main idea of the article, which is about factors going to drive bitcoin prices up?

With that said, the two catalysts that Lee mentions are "strengthening infrastructure of the cryptocurrency exchange market" and "fear of missing out amongst institutional investors". Personally, I don't believe in either as both drivers are mostly about stirring up speculation while what we actually need is expanding the presence of bitcoin in the real world, not wild speculation all over again. So even if Lee turns out to be right after all, we will see just another bull run which will inevitably end in a painfully long slide-down to new lows from new highs, if we ever get to these highs at all.

bitcoin and cryptocurrency investor have been suffered by the massive dip that happened so far , we hope it stops there as we wait for massive bull run. people really thought the bull run will depend om the sec approval on ETF but now it seems it will no more be a catalyst. but everyone believe the bull run is still coming but what will spike it isn what we dont know yet.

This could happen where if the price is truly impenetrable from the price of $ 6000 the next possibility that happens is that bitcoin will try to return to a positive price in the range of $ 9000- $ 10000 and if that point can occur it will likely be stable at the price of $ 10000- $ 12000 because it is supplying price equilibrium zone

Statements of big experts on financial markets about the upcoming growth and the increasing number of positive news about cryptocurrencies will inevitably lead to a change in trends in the cryptocurrency market. Information about the imminent growth in two months is quite plausible.

Whilst $6000 seems to be acting as a fairly solid floor I’d really like to see us break through $7500 and stay there. I can’t help but feel pessimistic seeing us go sideways for so long.

Long term I’m uber bullish about bitcoin & I’m not selling a single satoshi for at least 2-3 years until after the next halving but I’d really like to see some upwards price movements soon.

Oh sure.

I still believe in the technology of blockchain. I love what Tom Lee had said. We just need one great news and Bitcoin price will surely sky rocket! Lots of companies are now starting to adapt blockchain and technology and some of them are making their own. I have no doubts in the future of Bitcoin. I know it will be one big thing in the upcoming years.

Tom Lee from FundStrat is notoriously wrong, he's the worst bitcoin predictor on the web!


That's an illogical reason for a support level. How can bitcoin miners control buy or sell activity? I'm not talking about the transactions - of course they can halt transactions - but how can they direct the flow of those transactions? They can't.

Another reason why this guys talk is bunk, but if anyone wants to share 3 times when he was write I'll take it back. Please provide documentation.

Tom Lee is a permabull to be fair, but he is right about the catalysts.

he is not exactly predicting anything although it may seem like it. he is mostly hyping things up while advertising his company!

the it is logical but a logic that is based on false information. the logic is that it costs miners X dollar to mine bitcoin so if it goes below X they will no longer sell removing a sell pressure on the market. also some say because some miners (like the big farms) are also big whales they won't allow the price to go below X as whales.
but the reason is mostly because people believe miners won't let it happen so they set their own buy orders above X effectively creating that resistance themselves without miners even doing anything! of course that is only one of the reasons why $6k has been the bottom.

So you agree with, thank you.

It's all marketing hype. And if he's marketing under the guise of advice he's a fraud.



The sell pressure only exists if the volume of bitcoin they're earning and withholding is material to the broader market trade volume on any given day.

On blockchain.info the Total Transaction Fees average per day is about 25BTC. The total Transaction Volume average per day is about 100,000BTC. If the theory is that bitcoin miners will hodl their transaction fees if the price gets to breakeven for them, that amounts to 0.025% of the total daily transaction volume (using our example). That's not enough to move the market!

Logical fallacies are worse than illogical theories because they trick people into believing they are real.

Tom Lee is like a fraudster medicine man from the 1900s.

Just realized my math is off because I'm not including the block awards...see my corrections below.

• Average daily total block awards in USD: $12.5M
• Average daily miner transaction fees in USD: $156,250
• Average total bitcoin transaction volume in USD: $625M

(Avg daily block awards + avg daily miner transaction fees) / Avg toal bitcoin transaction volume = percentage of miner income to total transaction volume (and materiality to move the market)

($12.5M + $0.156250M) / $625M = 0.02 or 2% of the market.

Anyone here believe that a withholding 2% of the daily trading volume of the market is going to influence the price in a meaningful way?

I don't.