Bitcoin Price Watch: BTC Breaks $4K, More Gains Possible

bitcoin price finally broke the $4,000 barrier and traded towards $4,100 against the US Dollar.
There was a break above a major bearish trend line with resistance at $3,830 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
The price is currently consolidating gains and dips towards $4,000 and $3,920 remain supported.

bitcoin price gained bullish momentum and cleared $4,000 against the US Dollar. BTC could correct a few points, but it is likely to resume uptrend above $4,100.

bitcoin Price Analysis

Recently, we discussed about a possible upside break above $4,000 in bitcoin [BTC] price against the US Dollar. The BTC/USD pair did move higher and broke the $3,950 and $4,000 resistance levels. The recent upward move was strong as the price even cleared the $4,050 level and 100 hourly simple moving average. More importantly, there was a solid hourly candle formed, piercing the $4,000 barrier.

During the rise, there was a break above a major bearish trend line with resistance at $3,830 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. The pair traded as high as $4,082 and later started consolidating gains. An initial support is the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $3,762 low to $4,082 high. Below $4,000, the price may move towards the $3,920 support level. It represents the 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $3,762 low to $4,082 high. The main support for buyers is near the $3,860 level, which was a strong resistance this past week. Therefore, if there is a downside correction, the price may find bids near the $4,000 and $3,920 levels.

Looking at the chart, bitcoin [BTC] price clearly broke a crucial resistance near $4,000 and $4,050. It is currently placed nicely above the 100 hourly SMA, but it must clear the $4,080-4,100 barrier for more gains. The next key resistance is at $4,200 followed by $4,220.

Technical indicators

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BTC/USD is slowly moving in the bearish zone, suggesting a downside correction.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is well below the 60 level, with a positive bias.

Major Support Level – $3,920

Major Resistance Level – $4,100

Published at Mon, 07 Jan 2019 07:00:24 +0000

April 25, 2017

Charlie Shrem: ‘It’s Not About The Technology Anymore, It’s About Power’

bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem shared his views on the scaling debate, stating that “it’s not about technology anymore, it’s about power.”

Shrem: ‘It’s About Power’

Charlie Shrem, bitcoin entrepreneur and co-founder of Intellysis, was present in today’s episode of the Double Down show, dubbed “Does Block Size Matter?” with the usual hosts Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert.

During the show, Shrem expressed his thoughts regarding the current state of the scaling debate or as Herbert called it, “the Great Blocksize War of 2017.”

Shrem stated:

In reality, it’s not a technical argument anymore. Everyone on both sides of the table say that SegWit is the best technology that we have.

According to Shrem, the scaling debate is no longer about the most viable technology or solution that can be used to scale bitcoin. Instead, the scaling debate has become a power struggle between two development teams, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Core.

“The other side of the debate, which is bitcoin Unlimited, they agree that SegWit is a great technology,” he continued. “But to them it’s not about technology anymore, it’s about power.”

Shrem went on to say:

They want to remove [bitcoin Core’s] ability to work on bitcoin and instead have a closed-membership small group of four to five developers, who they think are the best for the job, run bitcoin going forward.

A Test for bitcoin

However, there is a silver lining in this development, which Shrem considers it as an “extremely bullish situation for bitcoin.” The current block size “drama” is showcasing bitcoin’s ability to resist a malicious attack on the network.

He noted:

Here you have a group of bad actors who are trying to overtake the bitcoin network and essentially fork all of bitcoin and force all bitcoin users to be able to use their developers and their codebase and their everything and it’s not a group of miners that’s preventing this.

Shrem sees the current hash power signaling as a “glorified poll” when it comes to hard fork given that nodes are the ones that validate blocks and they can discard the ones from the hard-forked chain at will, meaning that miners don’t have nearly as much power as they think they do.

This can be observed the UASF proposal, which would bypass the miners completely and leave it up to the nodes to force SegWit into activation.

However, it may not come down to a UASF, as mining pools like F2Pool are beginning to move to SegWit driven by demand from individual users that contribute hashrate to the pool.

Champagne Problem

Not all is gloomy for bitcoin, however. Amidst all the tension and drama, one must also look at the bright side, which is the reason we’re having this heated debate at all: Bitcoin is growing at an exponential rate.

This is, as Shrem puts it, a “champagne problem,” one that gives us as much to celebrate as it gives us to fight about.

“It’s a good problem to have. bitcoin has grown really quickly. We never expected this to happen so quickly, to be honest. We’re getting towards what they call a ‘champagne problem,’ how do you scale?” he said.

This means that not only is bitcoin working as intended, but there is also an urgent need for such a currency in the world. Now, it’s only a matter of making sure that bitcoin can become that currency and still maintain its decentralized and immutable characteristics.

Shrem concluded:

There has always been research and conversations on scaling over the past three years but, to be honest, we didn’t think we’d see this exponential growth in bitcoin and now it’s time to have that conversation.

Do you agree? Is the scaling debate actually about power and control? Share below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, alchetron.com, coin.dance

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