While a lot of experts are celebrating over the rising price of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency has witnessed a correction last Friday. Bitcoin initially fell to $9,592 at 01:59 UTC, the lowest price for the entire week. However, Bitcoin was able to make a comeback above the $10K range staying at around $10,082 as of writing this article. Within the last 24 hours, BTC has dropped by 1.86% according to CoinMarketCap. It appears that Bitcoin is still moving towards a bullish trend.
Could it mean that Bitcoin is now ready to move closer to $20K again? For some experts, this could probably be the case. But of course, this could take some time now that things have changed in the landscape of cryptocurrencies.
It is also worth mentioning that the global average price for Bitcoin is around $200 higher on the average due to the “kimchi premium”. That means Bitcoin is being sold for more than $11,000 on Korean exchanges such as Bithumb and Coinone. As for the western cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitcoin stays closer within the $10,000 range.
Regulatory Issues
Bitcoin reached almost $20,000 during the second week of December 2017. After which, Bitcoin has drastically depreciated to just below $6,000 at one point. China has started to stop crypto-related activities in the countries starting September 2017. It has continued to this day. And now, both international and local crypto exchanges are banned from operating in China.
South Korea is also part of the reason why Bitcoin’s value dropped significantly. South Korea is one of the countries with the most number of Bitcoin investors. When regulators tried to even consider banning the operations of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, it was only natural for many investors to get alarmed making Bitcoin’s value to drop. But now, the South Korean government is moving towards “normalization” of crypto activity rather than imposing strict regulations.
Decreasing Fees
Another reason why more people are now going back on Bitcoin is its current transaction fees. It is worth mentioning that compared to a year and a half ago, Bitcoin’s transaction fees are currently cheaper. From $26, it has come down to just $3. It wasn’t long ago that Bitcoin Cash was made in order to cater to transactions with lower fees. Backing up with the unanimous clamor of investors to have lower fees combined with the growing interest of other individuals on other altcoins, it seemed that Bitcoin had no other choice but to adopt a lower fee.
But one of the main reasons is the volume of transactions per day. Bitcoin has been getting 400,000 transactions per day in December, while now it is only half. According to BitGo engineer Mike Belshe, “I think it’s really simple”. He added that “There is substantially less transaction demand”.
What Could Be the Future BTC Price?
So what can we expect? It is possible that Bitcoin could still make it to $10,250 courtesy of the bullish RSI divergence. As for the longer-term forecast, it is also possible that Bitcoin could still slump up until $8,800 over the weekend.
