Is this the end for Bitcoin? Has the Bubble Popped?

Since the 17th of December 2017, bitcoin has been trending downwards and tens of billions of dollars have been pouring out of the cryptocurrency at a very fast rate. Some people have maintained that Bitcoin is just having a healthy retracement, and others are wondering whether the "Bitcoin Bubble" has popped. Let's first take a look at the events of this month and the relevant price action.

On the 10th of December 2017, the CBOE released their Futures contracts for Bitcoin. From the 8th of December until the release, price action was bearish in preparation for this release. The USD price per Bitcoin went from about 17,500 down to about 13,500 and then after the release Bitcoin recouped this $4,000 loss in full, rising back to close just above 17,500 2 days later. If you look at the market cap for these days you will see the following:

8th December: $298 billion.
9th December: $276.5 billion.
10th December (CBOE Release): $254 billion.
11th December: $258 billion.
12th December: $283 billion.

Clearly the news of Bitcoin being traded in the Futures market allowing big institutions to short the crypto without actually buying it first scared a lot of smaller investors out of the market. However, once investors realized that the CBOE was not going to do long-term damage to Bitcoin's price and a lot of big money players were not going to trade using the CBOE, considering the CME (a much larger marketplace than the CBOE) was just round the corner, they were bullish again, and so about $30 billion of the $44 billion taken out was injected back in.

So, price consolidated for 3 days and then between the 15th of December and the 17th of December Bitcoin's price increased to an all-time high of around $19,900, just short of the $20,000 milestone. This mini bull trend occurred until the release of the CME and of course now we have seen an extended down move from that high of $19,900 on the 17th to the current price of $13,775. Again, if we look at the market cap during this down move we will see the following:

17th December (CME Release): $326 billion.
18th December: $320 billion.
19th December: $320 billion.
20th December: $297.5 billion.
21st December: $279 billion.
22nd December (Current): $235.5 billion.

Here we can see over $100 billion dollars has been withdrawn from the Bitcoin market (30% of market cap lost) in only 5 days. This is of course not small investors pulling their money from the market, because every small "investor" I speak with tells me that Bitcoin is just correcting and it will go back up to and beyond $20,000.

Big money players have pulled out their backing for this coin and I believe it is for the best for the cryptocurrency market. I say this because Bitcoin has a lot of flaws and there are other coins who have already addressed at least some of these issues. Bitcoin is of course the first adopter and I believe once this becomes irrelevant to people and they see that Bitcoin probably won't even be good for financial gain anymore it will become a thing of the past and more secure, private, anonymous and faster cryptocurrencys will take over as the true market leaders based on technology and not speculator gains.

Looking at the BTC/USD chart for Coinbase now while I write this price has broke below the last major support point I have identified a few times and continually trying to close below it on the 4 hour chart, so I would not be surprised if price does manage to close below this support area soon and this should create a further wave of selling and price could go well below $13,000 very soon.

So in conclusion, I would of course not recommend buying bitcoin right now (not saying it is 100% dead and will never go back up again) as capital is still being pulled at alarming rates from the market and price is just falling at free-fall rate. I do believe this could be a great time to buy coins for cheap which have promising technologies, like Monero, who could overtake bitcoin and become the new market leader. As I have said I believe it is only a matter of time before Bitcoin is replaced as the leading cryptocurrency. This is of course just a collection of my opinions and beliefs and not financial advice for anyone, always do your own research and make your own decisions.