Bitcoin continues to trade calmly. And it is quietly declining.
Bitcoin is trading very calmly on the eve of Christmas and New Year. At the time of writing, the cost of one coin was $47,000. Thus, at the moment, the quotes of "bitcoin" have fallen by $ 22,000 from the absolute maximum. Many cryptocurrency "experts" continue to insist that the first cryptocurrency will continue its growth with the goal of $ 100,000, "forgetting" that most of the forecasts for 2021 have failed. Yes, bitcoin has risen in price, even updated its absolute highs, but it did not even come close to the level of $ 100,000. Thus, most of the forecasts from the experts of the cryptocurrency world have nothing to do with reality. In principle, it's very easy to say that bitcoin will cost $100,000, and when it happens, it doesn't matter. It didn't happen in 2021, okay – let's move the forecast to 2022.
Bitcoin is losing popularity.
At the same time, bitcoin, in principle, continues to lose its popularity. Recall that a few years ago, the bitcoin dominance index was at least 50-60%. This means that 50-60% of the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market was accounted for by bitcoin. Now, these figures are almost twice as low. Other cryptocurrencies are displacing bitcoin and this may be one of the factors of the fall of "digital gold" in the long term. The fact is that most investors still use bitcoin as an investment tool. Investors are interested in how much bitcoin will rise in price in a year, two, three, or ten years. Few people use bitcoin as a means of settlement or payment (we do not take El Salvador into account). Thus, if the market realizes that the best years of bitcoin are over, then the demand for it will gradually decrease. And along with the demand and its rate. It should be understood that nothing in the world can get more expensive forever (unless you make adjustments for inflation and money supply growth). If the amount of money in the economy remains unchanged, then no product can become more expensive all the time. Bitcoin has shown growth in the last year solely because the Fed and other central banks of the world pumped the world economy with money, some of which settled on the cryptocurrency market. That's the whole secret. Such growth can be called "inflationary".
The remuneration of miners will decrease.
Meanwhile, it became known that over the 12 years of bitcoin's existence, about 19 million coins have already been mined out of a total of 21 million. This means that miners can mine another 2 million, but since the fewer coins remain available for mining, the smaller the amount of remuneration for the extracted block, according to experts, it will take more than 100 years to mine 2 million coins. And this is not a joke. Theoretically, bitcoin can continue to be mined for another 100 years, but for it to be economically feasible, it is required that bitcoin constantly rises in price, because the remuneration to miners will decrease from year to year. From our point of view, this is the second factor that can deter many investors from investing in bitcoin.
The trend on the 4-hour timeframe remains downward, and the trend line supports the further fall of "bitcoin". The cryptocurrency is located below the Ichimoku cloud, so there are no prerequisites for the start of growth on the current TF yet. The nearest target levels are $46,600, $43852, and $40,746. It will be possible to count on new growth of "bitcoin" only if its quotes are fixed above the trend line. From our point of view, a new long-term downward trend is emerging now.