The past 24 hours have brought some more ups and downs for the Bitcoin price. That in itself is hardly surprising, as all cryptocurrency markets are going through a volatile patch once again. Right now, the Bitcoin price is hovering near the US$4,260 mark, which confirms that passing the US$4,300 level for an extended period of time will remain rather difficult in the near term. The trading volume is also declining rapidly, which is somewhat worrisome.
Bitcoin Price Momentum Keeps Fluctuating
Over the past 24 hours, we have seen a few different Bitcoin price valuations, although none of them have been maintained for significant periods of time. On multiple occasions did we see the Bitcoin price surpass the US$4,300 mark, only to be pushed down to US$4,250 shortly afterward. It is evident someone is either manipulating this market to no end or there are forces at work which don’t want the price to surpass US$4,300 again anytime soon.
Manipulation is the more likely answer in this regard, as the same ranges have been tested on multiple occasions by now. The low seems to be in the US$4,260 area, whereas the high point is US$4,350 or slightly below. If people can “flip” coins in this range multiple times on the same day, they stand to make a good amount of profit as a result. However, to make such manipulation happen, one would expect the Bitcoin trading volume to have picked up, and that has not happened by any means.
If anything, it seems the Bitcoin trading volume is only going down from here on out. While yesterday saw almost US$1.5 billion in 24-hour volume, that number has since dropped all the way to US$1.08 billion. That’s not a positive sign by any means, as this indicates fewer people are exchanging altcoins for Bitcoin and vice versa. It is unclear why this is happening right now, though, as there is no real reason for this momentum or lack thereof.
Even the Bitfinex exchange shows less 24-hour trading volume than we have gotten used to recently. Whereas the platform used to present around US$150 million in volume every single day, that number has now dropped to just under US$94 million. It’s not a big scare by any means, but it shows Bitcoin is struggling a bit in every part of the world right now. BitFlyer and Bithumb are the other top exchanges ranked by trading volume. Both of those Asian platforms also see slightly less trading volume, even though they value the Bitcoin price slightly higher than Bitfinex does.
What is extremely remarkable is how there is only one altcoin/Bitcoin market in the entire top 10 right now. Said market is HitBTC’s BCH/BTC trading pair, which is more popular than fiat currency trading on GDAX, WEX, Kraken, and Gemini. It is very unusual to see this lack of altcoin trading in correlation to Bitcoin. It’s a telling sign, although it remains to be seen what this is trying to tell us. Whether or not this is a calm before a storm or a sign of a bearish market is impossible to tell.
Not every day can be filled with major Bitcoin price gains; that much is obvious. However, this sudden lack of interest is rather unusual, although not unique by any means. A lot of “experts” are wondering how the SegWit2x hard fork will impact the Bitcoin price. That remains a big question for the time being, and it could be a contributing factor to this lackluster Bitcoin trading activity right now.
