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Bitcoin is better bid at press time and could maintain its recent upward trajectory despite a long-term bearish indicator making its first appearance in 19 months.

The top cryptocurrency rose to a two-month high of $8,580 during Tuesday's Asian trading hours and is currently trading at $8,480 indicating a 4.8 percent rise on a 24-hour basis, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.

Bitcoin is now up by more than 30 percent from the low of $6,425 reached in December 2019.

While the cryptocurrency is showing signs of life following the gloomy second half of 2019, a widely tracked technical indicator is about to flash a bearish signal.

The 50-candle average on the three-day chart is trending south and looks set to cross below the 100-candle average in the next few days. That would be the first bearish crossover of the two averages since June 2018.

However, moving averages are based on historical data and tend to lag prices. To put it another way, crossovers are the result of the price action that has already happened and have limited predictive powers.

While bitcoin did drop in the days leading up to and after the confirmation of the same bear cross in June 2018, the broader market conditions were bearish at the time, as seen below.

3-day chart

The 50- and 100-candle MAs produced a bear cross in the three days to June 21, 2018 (above left). Prices had fallen from $7,800 to $6,300 in the first two weeks of June and dropped further to lows below $5,800 by the end of the month.

A subsequent rise ended up creating a bearish lower high at $8,500 and prices remained below the 50-candle MA till April 2019.

It's worth noting that bitcoin had rallied by more than 1,300 percent in 2017 before falling by 50 percent in the first quarter of 2018. Essentially, the market had a hard landing after the staggering annual gain, and the bear cross likely gave traders a reason to unwind their long positions.

Brighter picture

This time, however, the situation is very different. Bitcoin has recently broken out of a six-month falling channel, signaling a resumption of the rally from lows near $4,100 seen in April 2019 and opening doors for a re-test of October highs above $10,000.

Further, the breakout comes four months ahead of the mining reward halving a process that reduces the supply of bitcoin. Alex Benfield, data analyst at Digital Assets Data, told CoinDesk the event could bode well for prices.

Historically, bitcoin tends to hit a new market cycle top (the highest point from the preceding bear market low) in the calendar year of a halving, but before the event, according to popular analyst Rekt Capital.

So, the cryptocurrency could rise above the 2019 high of $13,880 ahead of the May 2020 halving.

All in all, the impending three-day chart bearish crossover should not be a cause for worry for the bulls.

4-hour and daily charts

The high-volume bounce from the ascending trendline on the 4-hour chart (above left) indicates the rally from the Jan. 3 low of $6,853 has resumed. Prices could challenge the 200-day average resistance at $9,097 (above right) in the next few days.

The daily chart (above right) also indicates the path of least resistance is to the higher side. For instance, the recent inverse head-and-shoulders breakout and the subsequent rise to two-month highs is telling a tale of a successful transition from a bearish-to-bullish setup.

The immediate bullish case would weaken if prices close (UTC) below $8,200 today. That level acted as strong resistance multiple times over the weekend.

A UTC close below the higher low of $7,667 created on June 10 is needed to confirm a short-term bearish reversal.

Disclosure: The author does not hold any cryptocurrencies.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Resurgent Bitcoin Will Likely Shrug Off Long-Term Bear Cross - Coindesk

Its a cliche at this point to compare bitcoin to the early days of the internet since they are both examples of emerging technologies.

But does the cliche actually hold true?

If we work with a vague definition of the World Wide Web going live in 1991, then within the first decade that ecosystem grew faster and had more demand for compliant use cases than bitcoin arguably has today, one decade in.

In 1994, the New York Times reported companies were rushing to set up shop via the World Wide Web, although the user experience was still slow and crude. Just like blockchain technologists, early internet companies ran into scaling issues. The 1994 Times report described the web as already showing signs of suffering from its own success, as crowds compete for access to popular databases. Yet, people were already starting to think about subscription paywalls for content distribution.

Industry insiders were so bullish on the commercial potential that in the December 1995 issue of Wired magazine, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy predicted the rise of disposable word processors and spreadsheets priced per use and delivered via Java software.

Within the first decade it was clear the internet could be used for commerce, interpersonal communications, marketing and education. There were established companies using it to turn a modest profit.

Blockstream alumnus and founder of the Blockchain Commons, Christopher Allen, said he is concerned about the lack of bitcoin adoption at this stage, which is why he is so optimistic about scaling solutions like the lightning network.

Lightning does have the potential to be where you buy your steak and bread, Allen said. Until you buy your bread or steak with bitcoin, youre going to have to convert to some other currency, no matter how good it is as a censorship-resistant medium.

To be fair, cryptocurrency has already proven its usefulness through cross-border collaboration. For example, the Decred treasury has distributed roughly $3.5 million worth of cryptocurrency to more than 60 contributors, according to the communitys press representative. Roughly 30 percent of these contributors hail from Latin America and 15 percent are from Africa, a more global distribution than comparable Silicon Valley startups.

Even so, such experiments are a far cry from the mainstream adoption many fans predict bitcoin will undergo in becoming a global, self-sustaining currency.

Community roots

Bitcoin may be behind the internets timeline in terms of commercial use cases, but it has already achieved comparable social functions.

By 2001, the New York Times was describing internet services like email as a platform for relationship-building with former coworkers and classmates, while startups pioneered video and music streaming services.

One such Yahoo group reportedly included 600 people exchanging hundreds of messages a month about the bankruptcy proceedings, health insurance and the fate of their retirement plans. This may be comparable to crypto communities today, which rely on forums, GitHub and social networking platforms like Twitter.

According to Allen, who focused earlier in his career on core internet protocols, the internet was also designed to offer more freedom of choice to the users even though, through big-tech consolidation, the industry eventually failed to reach that vision.

Zcash co-creator and Electric Coin Company CEO Zooko Wilcox agreed that the early software projects he worked on were supposed to offer freedom and end wars, because people would just talk things out over the internet.

Wilcox said, looking back at his time in the 1990s working on bitcoins predecessor, Digicash, that he idealistically underestimated the importance of economic incentives.

What I would tell myself, if I could use a time machine, it just being compatible [with commercial use] isnt good enough, Wilcox said. This was a fatal flaw in the overall design of the [open software] movement, that is relied on ongoing volunteers or donations. It didnt have a built-in economic feedback loop.

Listen to Leigh's full interview with Zooko Wilcox

In this regard, bitcoin has a great track record during this first decade. Yet, it remains to be seen if bitcoins ecosystem provides a self-sustaining model.

Similar risks

Some coders believe early advocacy for strong legal frameworks that protect freedom, coupled with forward-thinking precautions, could help the decentralized Web3 avoid or minimize early mistakes.

Protocols would have a lot of flexibility in terms of what types of security you need, etc., and along the way we ended up creating the central Certificate Authority (CAs) business not quite realizing that 20 years later all the CAs all got consolidated, Allen said. We were supposed to be able to choose which CA we trusted. Centralization crops up in odd ways.

Marco Peereboom, a Dell alumnus and Linux veteran who is also currently the Decred communitys New Systems Development Lead, agreed with Allen that the internet was built by idealistic young men who wanted to uplift humanity. (Not unlike crypto adherents today.)

Im extremely disappointed with where we are today, Peereboom said. The amount of snooping the government is doing, I didnt anticipate. More cryptography early on would have done the internet a lot of good, and more advocacy as well.

Along these lines, Allen is focused on work related to user-friendly-yet-secure key management and blockchain identity standards. Meanwhile, Peereboom is working to refine Decreds open source funding experiments, which is how he earns a salary today.

Much like the altcoin project Dash, Decred pays freelancers through public votes and grants collected from the network itself. Plus, Decred developers can earn money anonymously based on the merits of their contributions.

Until the internet moves away from the ad-sponsored model, it will only get worse, Peereboom said, referring to potential surveillance and corporate dominance via upcoming Web3 models.

I think anonymous payments are a must-have feature for any cryptocurrency to be around, he said. I hope Im not making the same mistake twice. But I really do believe cryptocurrencies have the potential to change the world.

Beyond bitcoin

From the perspective of veteran bitcoiners like Peereboom, many of whom are now focused on altcoin projects, bitcoins weakness is how difficult it is to update the software.

He said there must be a middle ground between constant changes and nearly impossible changes.

Writing bug-free software just doesnt happen, Peereboom said. You need a mechanism to deal with consensus changes.

Plus, bitcoiners like Peereboom and Wilcox are both prioritizing the privacy-enhancing aspects of cryptocurrency. Is it possible for governance mechanisms to resist centralization over several decades? Thats what Wilcox is trying to figure out.

It would be dishonest and overselling to tell people this is inevitable, Wilcox said.

He added Linux failed, in his opinion, because the movement redefined success to match corporate adoption rather than broader social change. As larger institutions profit from or leverage bitcoin, just like with the internet, the risks to users personal freedoms increase.

Theres going to be a lot of challenges along the way, and harm. Id like to mitigate the harm as much as possible, Allen concluded.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Is Bitcoin in 2020 Really Like the Early Internet? - CoinDesk

Photo Illustration by Avishek Das

Recent events have rallied bitcoin, spiking the cryptocurrency more than 20%. As the Iran/U.S. situation cools, so does the bitcoin price.

Its easy to predict various scenarios on the basis of pure speculation, but that kind of guessing is hard to turn into reliably profitable positions.

Bitcoin (BTC) is still in a bear trend. This might be hard to believe because the price has been so strong but Bull and Bear markets are easy to understand when you have the key. This is the key:

Price movements during a bull trend and a bear trend

Bear markets spike up and slide down, bull markets slide up and slump down. As such the recent rally is in a bear market trend.

Here is the master chart for bitcoin:

The master chart for Bitcoin

The recent high is bang on the trend top of the current bear market. You can see this trend extended by me below, in a previous analysis drawn up before Christmas 2019. (You can see the price on the day on the right axis label.) These predictions have panned out pretty well.

The Bitcoin trend before Christmas

And again in December:

The trend in December

This bear trend is still securely in place. However, I think its fair to say charts do not predict the unknown, unknowns. Trends are just ranges of price created by volatility and that volatility in this bear phase is fairly constant. This bear channel defines the range of prices that the current state of the markets can give bitcoin depending on what events come out of the soup of unresolved situations. Iran, China, Hong Kong, North Korea are all factors as are others and their possible impact and their probabilities are rolled into todays price and its historical range.

But what next? Time looks to be running out on this Bear.

The bear trend may be running out

2020 is going to have plenty of general volatility and this will push bitcoin upwards. This will come as a function of the presidential election, with all the global political trolls trying to get their leverage on in the run-up. Then there is thehalvening.

If BTC breaks out of this bear channel it will fly. It wont take much.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin Bulls should dollar cost average in. Bitcoin is a instrument where if you dont know which way it going, you should steer clear of it because one thing is certain whichever direction it goes, its going to be a wild ride and unless you are very sure of your position, you will get shaken out.

Meanwhile, my eyes are onHong Kong. Once the U.S./China trade deal (Part 1) is signed the gloves may well come off in China. Big trouble in Hong Kong will certainly spike BTC.

Clem Chambers is the CEO of private investors websiteADVFN.com, author of 101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners and Trading Cryptocurrencies: A Beginners Guide and the 2018 winner of Journalist of the Year in the Business Market Commentary category in the State Street U.K. Institutional Press Award.

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Bitcoin: The Next Level - Forbes