Still Too Early To Declare Longer-Term Bitcoin Trend Change

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

January has yielded several bouts of upward price action for bitcoin as the asset looks back on an overall positive start to 2020. John Bollinger, financial analyst, trader, author and originator of the Bollinger Bands technical chart indicator, said he sees positive structure on bitcoin’s chart, but its too soon to declare a longer-term bullish trend reversal.

“I’m very constructive on bitcoin’s price right now,” Bollinger told me in an interview on January 27, 2020 while bitcoin’s held near $8,800. “We’ve completed a meaningful bottom formation,” he added referring to bitcoin’s price chart.

“We broke out, pulled back from very short term, made a little test of the breakout level and rallied higher,” Bollinger continued. Bitcoin then proceeded to fall back to the midline of the Bollinger Band indicator before bouncing and heading higher in price, he added.

After starting 2019 below the $4,000 mark, bitcoin experienced an exuberant price run between April and June 2019, taking the asset up past $13,800 per coin by June’s end, according to Coinbase’s BTC chart on TradingView.com Bitcoin’s price fell on difficult times in the latter half of 2019, however, posting successive lower rally attempts until the end of the year, signaling the presence of a downward bearish price trend.

In contrast, 2020 so far has yielded positive price action for crypto’s pioneer asset. Bitcoin began the year around the $7,000 mark, posting a seeming bottom-like price formation, as Bollinger mentioned. The asset has since rallied in price from its chart bottom near $7,000.

Most recently, bitcoin rose from approximately $7,700 to almost $9,200 on January 19. The coin then fell down to $8,250 by January 24, finding support in that region before rallying to a press time price of $9,265.

“It’s a pretty constructive pattern,” Bollinger said, adding to his initial comments. The expert noted bitcoin formed its price chart base pattern between November 2019 and early January 2020. “So far we’re progressing pretty well,” he said.

Bollinger pointed to a tweet he posted on January 23 which expressed that bitcoin’s pullback to the middle Bollinger Band near $8,300 made sense as a support level.

“I pointed out on Twitter a couple days ago that what bitcoin needed to do was hold support here at the middle Bollinger Band, and that’s exactly what its done,” Bollinger told me.

“It held support. We’ve had two days of rally now and I think the price of bitcoin looks higher.

Bitcoin’s recent rally begs the question — has crypto’s top asset broken its downtrend that began last summer? “I think it’s a little bit early to be convinced of that,” Bollinger said.

“We just made an intermediate term bottom and just started up — we need some more evidence here in terms of a bigger picture, but I think the outlook is pretty constructive right now.”

Crypto trader and Brave New Coin analyst Josh Olszewicz (CarpeNoctom on Twitter) expressed similar sentiment on January 28. “We’ll know how bullish we are in two weeks,” Olszewicz told me in a Telegram message. Mentioning multiple charting signals, including the Ichimoku Cloud and a moving average golden cross, the trader added, “All trend metrics point bullish soon.”

Additionally, Olszewicz said his statement applies to the entire crypto market. “This is across the board on everything, not just BTC,” he noted.

Despite bitcoin’s exuberant history and optimistic charts, some folks still remain bearish on the asset as a whole, including Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who called bitcoin a “gambling device” in 2019, according to a CNBC report.

Disclaimer: I actively trade cryptocurrencies, as well as hold a small amount of BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, NEO, ZEC, BEAM, BCH, DASH, LINK, XTZ and various insignificant other altcoin positions.