Bitcoin prices brushing back to where they were before Bitfinex
The word on the street is bullish, but there are questions of whether Bitcoin will go down before it goes up.
"S'cuse me, coming through," Bitcoin's mid-market price murmurs as it nudges its way past mild resistance lines. "Pardon me."
It approaches the $5,400 barrier, takes a second to gather itself and then puts its best foot forward into the $5,400 range.
At the same time, Bitcoin's Bitfinex price kicks $5,600 in the stomach, screams at the $5,700 mark to "get the **** out of my way" and then headbutts $5,800 for looking at it funny.
Bitfinex prices (green) almost immediately shot back to where they were before the incident, and have broadly tracked with the rest of the market (Coinbase prices in blue) since then, albeit on a completely different level.
But the price rise of today has seen another divergence. That little pop-up at the end of the above chart lasted about an hour, during which Coinbase BTC prices rose by about $60 but Bitfinex prices spiked well over $100.
Bitcoin on Bitfinex is now trading at a whopping $400 more than Coinbase.
Part of the reason might be the news of the Crypto Capital indictments percolating through the crypto ecosystem. This could have raised new concerns around Bitfinex and Tether, and resulted in a new rush to the door. Or it could just be one of those things.
While the real Bitcoin prices have almost pushed their way back to where they stood before the big Bitfinex drop, the prices on Bitfinex have gone well above. That it's maintaining such a high level for so long suggests that the market might be pricing some serious danger pay into Bitfinex's order book.
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Where to?
Bitfinex's eccentricities aside, the question is which way Bitcoin will go from here.
The general vibe on the street is net bullish, largely because despite everything, Bitcoin is still convincingly imitating its pre-bullrun moves of 2015, and there's a fairly widely held expectation of an encore any day now.
But even among the bulls, there's still talk of Bitcoin retracing down to the $4,000 or even $3,000 range before it goes big, if it does go big. On the other hand, Delphi Digital has released its monthly Bitcoin Outlook report, which says the bottom is in with a degree of confidence which may or may not be justified.
The only prediction you can bank on now is that Bitcoin will go up, and Bitcoin will go down, not necessarily in that order.
Disclosure: The author holds BTC at the time of writing.
