On Friday, Bitcoin rose 10% to break out of the Bull Flag pattern forming on the daily chart. Volume was a little disappointing though so there is a chance that Bitcoin corrects back to the flag. The cryptocurrency did attempt to touch $50k on Sunday, touched $49.3k to be precise. However, it faced strong and immediate rejection and was pushed back to $47k. At the time of writing this post, Bitcoin is trading at $47,500.
Bitcoin's hash rate, though, has been constantly creeping up.
While the hash rate isn't an indication of future bullishness, this means that more hashing power is joining the market because the price has gone up, or to some extent, is expected to go up. After all, at higher prices, it becomes profitable to mine Bitcoin so more miners join in. While not a great indicator, the rise in hashing power during a month when prices have fallen to me indicates that the market, especially the miners are bullish on Bitcoin.
Looking at the charts alone, I feel that Bitcoin may drop slightly from these levels (since Friday's move was not backed by strong volume) or the price may fluctuate around 50 DMA for some time. HODLing is on the rise and shorts are at an all-time low on Bitfinex. Even the slightest of Bitcoin buying has the potential to turn into sharp up moves, and that may have happened on Friday. Post consolidation at 50 DMA, I expect Bitcoin to continue its uptrend and hit new all-time highs this month.
There are also rumours of a Bitcoin ETF being approved in the US but I think that will only be raised in the media to justify a move up and to get more users to pile into Bitcoin at much higher levels. To me, the near term risk is continued equity sell-off, i.e. risk-off. However, even that should be limited as a 10% to 15% correction in equities will bring back talks about increased liquidity from central banks and the central banks will be able to manipulate the market to switch to risk-on. All in all, I think by end of this year, Bitcoin will be touching $100k.