Markets Report: Bitcoin sees rejection at $19,500 as all-time highs expected

Bitcoin returned to $19,000 on November 25 after 24 hours of intense volatility failed to give the market to the bears. 

Data from price trackers including CoinMarketCap and TradingView underscored the highly varied conditions for Bitcoin traders on Wednesday—swings of several hundred dollars at a time were common.

On Tuesday, Bitcoin surprised market participants once more by tackling and maintaining $19,000 as support for much of the day. After hitting $19,420, subsequent performance was less self-assured, and a retracement overnight bottomed out at below $18,700. 

As was the case with $18,000, however, a rebound saw the focal level return, and at press time, Bitcoin had already beaten its previously daily high, aiming for $19,500 before a fierce rejection.

“Well, (all-time high) today for #bitcoin then finally?” trader Michaël van de Poppe asked Twitter followers. He added that he agreed about Bitcoin immediately reversing at $20,000, as investors would be keen to take profits.

Despite not yet reclaiming the seminal highs, however, Bitcoin saw its second-highest trading day in terms of USD on Tuesday, with Wednesday thus shaping up to be its third-highest in history. November, additionally, marks Bitcoin’s best monthly performance on record in USD.

Not just traders, meanwhile, but other Bitcoin figures were more than convinced that further upside was in store.

“We are watching simple supply and demand economics play out. Bitcoiners aren’t selling their Bitcoin. The halving cut incoming supply,” Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano, known as “Pomp,” summarized on Wednesday. 

“There is a significant increase in demand. Price has to go up to accommodate. This isn’t rocket science.”

As Modern Consensus reported, this supply and demand imbalance is being driven by institutional and corporate entities rather than strictly retail interest. 

Supporting the bearish argument, however, were analysts including the prominent Tone Vays, who revealed that he was now looking for a pullback as low as $14,000. That would mimic behavior from 2017, breaking up the narrative that the nature of this year’s bull run is more sustainable thanks to the composition of Bitcoin’s investor base. 

Focusing on the period after the short-term volatility abates, the picture nonetheless still firmly favors the optimistic figures who have supported Bitcoin throughout the past three years and prior. 

“I don’t think it’s that crazy to see a $100,000 Bitcoin price by the end of 2021,” Pompliano told CNBC’s Squawk Box segment in an interview the same day. 

“…If this kind of tips over and all of a sudden it becomes a kind of consensus trade, it wouldn’t surprise me to see something even higher than $100,000.”

What could pop his enthusiasm, he continued, is either a “self-inflicted wound” in the form of a serious bug in Bitcoin’s code, or a major crackdown from governments worldwide. Both, he said, had a “very low probability of occurring.”