Bitcoin traders appear to be heeding a warning of a demand slowdown ahead of China\u2019s lunar New Year.<\/p>\n
The largest cryptocurrency slumped as much as 4% to $8,281, while altcoins such as Ethereum Classic tumbled more than 11% to $8.18 in New York trading.<\/p>\n
Arthur Hayes, co-founder and chief executive officer of BitMex, a cryptocurrency exchange, predicted in a post on Twitter late Wednesday that it\u2019s time for \u201cvolatility and volumes to nose dive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cryptocurrencies have been under pressure this week. The price of Bitcoin has dropped more than 6% since Friday, while the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index — which tracks some of the major digital currencies — has slumped about 5.7%.<\/p>\n
\u201cBitcoin and the entire crypto space are under pressure as uncertainty over regulatory scrutiny is expected to intensify and investor skepticism grows for the short-term outlook for risky assets,\u201d said Ed Moya, a market analyst with OANDA. Investors \u201csaw central banks unite and begin a review on digital currencies, fading optimism that a Bitcoin ETF will occur, and amid the China coronavirus worries, a flight-to-safety to the bond markets and not cryptocurrencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty of the top 50 crypto exchanges are based in the Asia-Pacific region and accounted for about 40% of Bitcoin transactions in the first half of last year, according to data from Chainalysis. Within the region, the most exchanges are in China, the research firm found.<\/p>\n
A number of technical indicators are flashing sell signals. Earlier this week, for instance, a measure of upward and downward movements of successive closing prices flashed a sell signal, the first such sign since Bitcoin\u2019s peak in June of last year. Should Bitcoin\u2019s price drop further, the GTI Vera Convergence-Divergence indicator could also generate such a signal.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin traders appear to be heeding a warning of a demand slowdown ahead of China\u2019s lunar New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":252401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-336164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-bitcoin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}