Spring’s chorus of bullish predictions for Bitcoin appears to be having some corroboration from recent markets, as Bloomberg reports on Bitcoin’s 4 percent gain today, April 20, putting the coin on track for its first back-to-back week of gains this year.
Bloomberg notes the recent upswing has brought BTC’s gains over the two-week period to almost 29 percent, with an upward trend for other major altcoins as well: Ripple up as much as 19 percent, Ethereum up 7.5 percent and Litecoin, 4 percent.
As an indication of market mood, buy/sell signals for Bitcoin are now showing 90 percent of traders buying Bitcoin, and only ten percent selling, for the first time since March 2017.
To quote Bloomberg, this mini-recovery somewhat “eases the pain” of BTC’s almost 50 percent loss in the first quarter of 2018, that followed hard upon late 2017’s $20, 000 high water mark.
Now that U.S. tax day (April 17) is over, some are seeing the markets’ mini rally as a vindication of their view that recent momentum to sell off crypto before federal income tax returns were due was causing much of 2018’s price misery.
April has also seen several traditional Wall Street players edge into the crypto space, suggesting that anticipation of more institutional money and talent is positively affecting recent markets, and that significant institutional investment capital could flow into the crypto market as it matures.
Yesterday Dan Morehead, CEO of Blockchain-focused hedge fund Pantera Capital, remarked that even the SEC busting high-profile ICO scams such as as that backed by Floyd Mayweather resulted in markets going up, not down, suggesting that “we’ve seen the brunt of the market’s negative reaction” to regulation.
Bloomberg’s insights echo those of more predictably bullish Bitcoin analysts such as Tom Lee, who most recently forecast that Bitcoin is likely to hit $25,000 by the year’s end, and venture capitalist and Bitcoin bull Tim Draper’s who said last week: “I’m thinking $250,000 by 2022.”