Bitcoin rallies to $11,000: Is it different this time?
All that glitters is not gold. Bitcoin is sparkling again but beware…breakdown’s coming up ‘round the bend.
Bitcoin jumped above $11,000, taking it to its highest level since March 2018 , before it pared some of those gains.
Investors are ignoring what happened the last time we saw the market going parabolic. Is it different this time? No, but people have short memories. The buzz is well and truly back.
Facebook’s Libra white paper may have stoked renewed interest in cryptos at a time when the buzz had already returned. Whether or note Libra is a real crypto, or just an asset-backed ETF, there is no doubt that it is generating interest in the broader space.
Bitcoin is certainly more mature – there are regulated futures contracts now – but the fundamentals of the scheme remain unaltered. Valuations are impossible to discern and the price is simply based on what the next person will give you. What I would say is that arguably big money is starting to view this differently and think it could be very costly to ignore if they get left behind.
It may also be that the sharp liquidity boost we’ve seen from central banks is helping bitcoin as it has helped the likes of gold, bonds and stocks in the last few days.
As I noted last week in a note to clients, it was only a matter of time before the $10k level was taken out it and now ultimately a retest of the all-time highs near $20k looks very plausible.
Once this market builds up a head of steam, it’s hard to stop it. This is a big momentum play and the more buzz there is, the more that traders will pile in behind the rising wave. Bears could get burned before the market turns – it may be better to wait and let it fizzle out, which it will eventually. The more it rallies, the bigger the blow-up when it comes.