Is This The Bottom For Bitcoin? You decide!

So the question on everybody's mind right now is whether or not Bitcoin has found a bottom in this bear market. Today we are going to examine a few of the arguments for and against this market bottom and explore what possibilities are out there for Bitcoin in 2019 and beyond.

2018 was an extremely rough year for Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency without a doubt. The never ending bear market would tease us with temporary relief rallies quickly followed by dumps in the weeks and months following. Over the summer we saw a relative period of stability but that was not enough to keep the crypto space afloat as we saw mass capitulation across the board at the end of the year. Bitcoin is still down roughly 82% from the all time highs of December 2017 which sent us soaring to unbelievable prices. What goes up must come down however and this is especially true in market hype cycles.

Some of the common beliefs among the masses going into 2019 is that "Bitcoin is a bubble" or "Crypto is a waste of money." Although we did go through the most volatile and massive run up in value that cryptocurrencies have ever seen, this is not the end by any means. Too many people are focusing on the price and not the intrinsic value proposition that blockchain and related DLTs technologies provide. Many vloggers online have been mentioning that unit bias is a huge thing in the human psyche and once the community can move past that they will see a better understanding of Bitcoin and less band wagoning on cheap altcoins that are shilled to them.

At the time of writing BTC is trading at nearly $3,583 on Coinbase Pro. Back at the height of the bull run (or very beginning of the bear market) Mike Novogratz, who is a well respected investor, trader and CEO of Galaxy Digital merchant bank, said Bitcoin would probably go back to around $8K so he held off on buying. When it continued to plummet lower and lower as the year went on the interest in cryptocurrencies began to fade and the outlook seemed grim. In the last quarter 2018 we saw crucial layoffs across the space combined with a mass extinction of alt-coin projects that just couldn't survive the crypto-winter. Even HODLers of last resort seemed depressed and beaten down- capitulating out of necessity to get by.

People who took out loans, or even worse used credit cards and cash advances, during the bull run are most certainly underwater on their debts. The only readily available options at that point will be to hold their assets until the market eventually recovers or to sell at a loss just to make payments without defaulting. Both of those actions are quite painful but one does what they have to in order to make ends meet as the community saw over the past year. Greed often gets the better of us humans so we are prone to making irrational decisions especially when the promise of vast fortunes is involved.

In an ideal world Bitcoin would become the new world reserve currency and every country would be fighting to mine for it, or at least that is what we are told by Bitcoin maximalists. There is a resounding need for a financial system that is transparent while remaining ubiquitous, reliable and trustworthy. Fiat currency is inherently flawed by design because of one main reason: INFLATION. By transitioning the entire global system to a new decentralized, self-sustaining, and most importantly deflationary model we will see a better outcome than what we are utilizing today.

So now let's get to the point of whether or not Bitcoin has bottomed in price. We should entertain both sides of the argument for the best idea of what is most likely to happen.

Say for a moment that Bitcoin has in fact bottomed at that $3,100 price zone and won't go a dollar lower from here on. At this point there are quite a few people still holding bags and waiting for the next bull run while others are slowly accumulating what they can afford. The majority of the selling pressure is of course coming from exchanges, miners and whales but there is enough daily demand at these levels to keep prices stable above $3K. Non-believers are saying "I told you so" while there are the ones who still think it will continue to drop further and are waiting on the sideline. Eventually the price begins to creep back up and gain some more momentum as the market sentiment shifts and the network effect takes ahold. Some of those investors who were waiting on the sideline to invest will FOMO into the market at much higher prices which will propel it to new highs in the coming years.

Conversely say we are going to continue to drop even further as the year goes on. The price being in the mid $3K range right now we could easily see $2,800 or $2,500 or even as low as $1,000-$1,800 according to some crypto analysts out there. The market is playing a twisted game of How Low Can We Go? The shrewdest of them all are still counting their cash profits and waiting for the market to hit absolute rock bottom before going all-in again. Who can be certain of where the true "bottom" lies and how long will we say there when it happens? Regardless of these answers the simple fact is that people DO expect the price to rebound from that point and to quite significant values long-term.

Both outcomes have the same end result and that is a much higher price for Bitcoin over time. If the price were to drop to say $1,000 or even perhaps $1,800 do you think you would be able to time the market JUST right to get a buy order in? Would you be too overcome with fear thinking about the risk of potentially losing even more or missing the true bottom at a lower price and invest less than you told yourself you would? The truth is that nobody knows the future for certain and both scenarios are possible yet we are still here to determine which is more probable. From here a drop to $1,800 would represent a further 50% decline in price. If BTC were to rebound to the all-time highs of $20,000 then you would be looking at $18,200 profit vs a $16,400 profit from current prices. Percentage-wise that is a much higher gain of over 1000% vs only 450% but those are both still serious returns either way.

Knowing that eventually Bitcoin could achieve such insane highs as a million dollars or more there are many people that are naturally interested in it for a long term investment. At that point does it really matter whether or not you paid $1,800 per coin or $3,600? Sure you could have gotten yourself more BTC for less fiat if you could have timed the bottom perfectly but how likely is it that you would have nailed it perfectly? The best strategy often times is to make sure you have a certain amount of exposure in the market while keeping some capital on hand in order to take advantage of both possibilities.

So you tell me now, has Bitcoin hit the Bottom?

Take my poll and let me know