Despite yesterday's bearish price action, the sell-off in the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization seems to have come to a halt today.

As per Coindesk's Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), bitcoin (BTC) found takers at $12,878.60 (price at 00:44 GMT) and moved to an intraday high of $13,773.34. Soon before press time, prices were at $14,090 levels – that's up around 9.4 percent from the 12-day low of $12,878.

The sharp recovery indicates the markets may have digested reports of a trading ban under consideration in South Korea. Further, investors may have realized that South Korea is unlikely to announce the move anytime soon, if at all.

So bitcoin may have found a short-term bottom, but that doesn't necessarily mean the cryptocurrency is heading back to record highs, as fears of a Korean clampdown could remain in the air for some time yet.

While, BTC could have a hard time seeing big gains in the short-term, the technical charts do point to consolidation ahead.

Despite the bearish price action, BTC defended the ascending trend line (drawn from Nov. 12 low and Dec. 22 low).

BTC caught a bid wave today after the bears failed to cut through the trendline support.
The 50-day moving average (MA) continues to rise in favor of the bulls.


A bearish crossover between the 5-day and 10-day MA, and the 5-day and 50-day MA (short term average cuts long term average from above).The sell-off ran out of steam near the upward sloping 10-week MA (currently at $12,743)
The 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement level of $12,573.88 acted as a strong in the last week of December. Further, last week's candle shows signs of bearish exhaustion near the Fibonacci level.

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The bullish (upward sloping) 10-week MA, 50-day MA and the repeated bearish exhaustion near the 38.2 percent Fibonacci level of $12.573 indicates any dips below $12,000 are likely to be short-lived.

That said, the bearish continuation pattern (rising wedge breakdown confirmed earlier this week) and the bearish MA crossovers listed above are likely to keep BTC bears in the game. Thus, in the short-run, cryptocurrency could have a hard time holding onto gains above $16,000.

The odds of a fresh sell-off towards $8,000 would improve if bitcoin spends next few days consolidating in the range of $16,000–$12,000. Such a move would allow the 50-day MA to top out (shed bullish bias). So, bulls need to capitalize on the successful defense of the ascending trendline seen in the last 24 hours.

Bullish Scenario: A close (as per UTC) above the upward sloping 50-day MA, followed by a move above $17,174 (Jan. 6 high) before Monday could open doors for a rally to record highs over $20,000.

I assume the reason why people ask this question is the latest development on part of Charlie Lee selling his holding in Litecoin. If that’s what make you think so, then you are only going to hurt yourself.

I wrote about Charlie Lee selling his stakes earlier. I beg to differ, but it will have no affect on the price of Litecoin whatsoever in the long run. There’s more to the Litecoin project and with Charlie Lee leaving his full time job from Coinbase only hints how serious he’s taking the project.

Just to cite as an example, on Jan 4th -5th alone 12 billion dollar worth Litecoins were exchanged. I believe it’s very wise and noble of Charlie to put his stake away and focus on the project. And if it’s in true spirit (which I think so) then we must appreciate it.

Charlie seems to be very focused on making Litecoin as payment currency rather than an investment tool (which is the lost purpose of Bitcoin). And that will happen slowly with people adopting it.

Having said that, you should definitely cut your losses given the opportunity and may be buy back or shift to any other Crypto. But keep in mind that Litecoin is going nowhere any time soon.
For more on Litecoin you might want to listen to Charlie Lee and why he took that decision.

The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, Binance, continues to see explosive growth in spite of price reductions across the market earlier this week. The company added 240,000 users in just one hour on Wednesday Jan. 10, surpassing all previous growth records.

Binance’s record growth this week is taking place in spite of drops across the markets, and negative comments from traditional investment moguls like Warren Buffet.

In response to Buffet’s pessimistic comments on the crypto market, Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng told Bloomberg in an interview Jan. 11:

“Warren Buffett is a guy I truly respect from an investment point of view. But I do not think he understands cryptocurrencies at all. It is what it is. I still respect him in other parts of his expertise. But I think on cryptocurrencies he’s making a big mistake.”

Zhao himself is even surprised by Binance’s growth, saying in the interview that the company had not expected the explosive numbers Wednesday. The company has hosted almost $5 bln in cryptocurrency trades in the past 24 hours to press time.

The exchange temporarily closed new registrations last week while undergoing an update to allow for higher volumes, and has since re-opened them to limited numbers.

Other industry insiders see the Binance success as a general sign of growth in the market, and increasing adoption. Gregory Van den Bergh, co-founder and CEO of MiCai, a Blockchain based wealth management firm, told Cointelegraph:

“We are just at the early stage of the crypto adoption curve. Binance and other crypto exchanges are still serving the crypto early adopters. The next phase of adoption will come from the 30 tln dollars that is currently actively managed on behalf of high net worth individuals across the globe.”

Bitcoin continues trading lower on the day, however. At press time, the average price among exchanges was $14,123, up almost four percent on the day.