Strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou sees momentum decaying, with Bitcoin’s $1 trillion market cap in jeopardy.
JPMorgan managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou is sounding bearish on Bitcoin.
The global market strategist warned in a client note yesterday that momentum will collapse if Bitcoin doesn’t take back the key level of $60,000 soon, Bloomberg reported.
Pointing out that the “Bitcoin futures market experienced a steep liquidation” over the past few days, the bank’s strategists compared it unfavorably to similar moves in November, January and February.
While Bitcoin was able to rally quickly in those instances, the outlook is cloudier now, with buyers less likely to jump in, they argued.
“Momentum signals will naturally decay from here for several months, given their still elevated level.”
Bitcoin is down almost $11,000 over the past seven days, a decline of 17%. Much more and the biggest cryptocurrency will lose its psychologically important $1 trillion market capitalization.
Not everyone’s worried, however.
Calling that $1 trillion market cap “a key line in the sand,” the popular statistician Willy Woo pushed back against JPMorgan’s bearishness on Twitter, arguing that it has “immense support.”
“Lots of bearishness from technical traders the last few days. Meanwhile fundamentals are stellar, we're very close to the bottom, if it hasn't already been put in.”
Pointing to the rate at which new Bitcoin investors are coming into the market, Woo added: “We're in the middle of a bull market with a hockey stick of new adoption, especially in the last 2 weeks.”
Ether Outperforms Bitcoin
Still, Bitcoin’s slump comes as the No. 2 cryptocurrency, Ether, has bounced back from a dip of its own this past week — up more than 13% in the past 24 hours.
And Ether has been outperforming Bitcoin substantially over the past month, up 250% — double Bitcoin’s 125%.
Bitcoin has had a stellar year so far, up about 200% from its January 1 price of $29,275. But Ether is doing much better, strengthening substantially against Bitcoin this year. It is up 325%, from about $750 to its current $2,450.
