I think most people really have a problem putting emotions aside and looking things in the proper rational context. A 770-800'ish price is where it was a month ago and nobody was complaining. So why complain now? Because it did a spike upwards and then got down again? So what? Price is near 2x where it was in the start of 2016 - and far better than the vast majority of stocks or currencies.
Some say "yeah, it's the sentiment, it's now negative".
Well, sentiment doesn't make one money, does it?
I mean if one follows the "sentiment" based on what the market already does, then one should buy high due to euphoria and sell low due to gloomy attitudes. Yet this is the recipe for disaster. One should be doing the exact opposite to the prevailing "sentiment" and buy low / sell high.
Now if one is not actively trading it, daily prices should not be of much concern - the only thing that matters is where price will be in X years. And if one is trading it, then they have no reason to be surprised at huge volatile movements.
Since exchanges have often ripped off their clients (the "we got hacked" narrative), there's a lot less confidence in exchanges. Less confidence means less funds and bitcoins deposited at any given time to avoid similar "incidents".
So we can either have a lot of liquidity in exchanges and risk big losses, or less liquidity which will be reflected in higher volatility. We can't have both (investor protection and volatility protection).
Additionally, Bitcoin's volatility is ensured (always remember that) by the fact that there are actors which operate in a different modus operandi to other actors as their coins have been acquired for free (coins from hackers, thiefs, scammers). A market-sell (sell at any price) of a big stash of such coins would always provide a tremendous profit to the seller no matter the price because they have spent nothing on them.
There are very few asset classes where one can simply start dumping vast quantities which they spent nothing on - at any price - and still profit, so in this sense bitcoin's movement can be different than other markets. You can't dump "stolen stocks" in the stock exchange, nor hack your way into gold contracts for the commodity exchanges. In Bitcoin it is possible. It is also possible to pump and dump altcoins with hacked coins.
Last thing to remember is that low liquidity (a byproduct of problematic confidence in exchanges) also allows trading "whales" (big players) to destroy thin order books with greater ease. By doing so they can force leveraged traders into liquidation, so that they can profit.
For short-term burst-like market movements, I believe these factors are more important than "news", whether these "news" are real or imagined. After a price swing, you get all kind of "reasons" as "news", yet rarely you'll hear about hacked coins or whale traders manipulation.
As for the long-term, the fundamentals will always prevail. In my opinion, one of Bitcoin's greatest fundamentals is that it its scarcity is extremely underrated. After the halving there are only +0.6 million coins generated per year. If you contrast this with the +110 million ounces of gold per year, you start to get a better picture on how easy it will be to increase the value with only tiny wealth injections into it.
Thank you this is a good point I know I did not think of it this way. Volatility due to protection of assets vs liquidity at the moment I don't think there is much we can do to fix the problems but true value per coin is going to increase drastically with either the halving or from scarcity as we reach the limit of coins that can be produced.
Insightful! Thanks. :)
I completely agree with your points. I am not a day trader and for me whats important about Bitcoin is its fundamentals.
Have they changed in the last few days?
I think the answer that that question is most definitely yes. They have improved. More transparency and control on Chinese exchanges and possibly mines. That is just good news for the fundamentals.
Nice points. The profit in X years is my vision and also why I'm not too worried. Bitcoin will in my eyes always be the standard of crypto transactions...if that changes in my X years that could be when I get worried.
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Yup I think your right upped back thanks for the support.