Author: The Frontier Post

Monitoring Desk

NEW YORK: Within a period of 12 hours, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped from $5,560 to $5,170, to a new yearly low.

After dropping to $5,750 on June 11, BTC has defended the $6,000 support level relatively well with sufficient volume and trading activity in the exchange market. $6,000 has since become a major resistance level for the dominant cryptocurrencies.

Is Bitcoin Headed to $4,000?

Last week, Crypto Rand, a well-recognized cryptocurrency trader and analyst, stated that the next likely range for BTC is between $4,800 to $5,200, especially if BTC fails to recover swiftly from the low $5,000 region to the $6,000 resistance level.

“More Scenario still active. No bottom signals. Target on the $4,800-$5,000 range,” Rand reaffirmed his stance on the short-term trend of BTC, explaining that technical indicators of BTC are not demonstrating any sign of a bottom.

Based on the current conditions of the market, a further drop below the $5,000 mark is highly likely. When a sell-off at this magnitude occurs across every other major cryptocurrency, the volume of BTC tends to spike by 70 to 100 percent.

On November 15, when the price of BTC dropped below the $6,000 for the first time since early August, the volume of BTC surged from $4 billion to $8 billion.

However, as of November 19, the volume of BTC remains at just above $4.8 billion, suggesting that sell-pressure on the asset is still relatively high and the resistance from bulls in the market remains low.

For a brief 48-hour period last week, major cryptocurrencies and small market cap tokens engaged in independent price movements, unaffected by the short-term trend of the dominant cryptocurrency.

As BTC continues to fall to the low region of $5,000 and becomes vulnerable towards an entrance into the high $4,000 region, other major cryptocurrencies and tokens are expected to fall by substantial margins.

Within a seven-day span, the price of BTC has dropped from around $6,400 to $5,170. Based on the intensity and the magnitude of the drop, a drop below the $5,000 mark is likely, especially considering that technical indicators are showing no signs of a bottom.

Willy Woo, a Bitcoin researcher and the founder of Woobull.com, said that fundamental indicators of the Bitcoin blockchain show a high probability of the negative sentiment around BTC and the rest of the crypto exchange market extending until the second quarter of 2019.

“This last reading of our blockchain and macro market indicators is still in play. What has changed is that NVTS has now broken its support, typically a sell signal. All our blockchain indicators remain bearish. NVT, NVTS, MVRV, BNM, NVM. They are experimental but have served to make very correct calls to date, even when traditional on-exchange indicators were reading to the contrary.”

If BTC drops below $5,000, the probability of the negative sentiment around crypto extending until the first half of 2019 could become inevitable. (CCN)

WASHINGTON (Agencies): Volkswagen expects to become the most profitable manufacturer of electric cars thanks to a multi-billion euro expansion plan to mass produce battery driven vehicles, Chief Executive Herbert Diess said last week.

VW will spend almost 44 billion euros ($50bn) on developing electric cars, autonomous driving and new mobility services by 2023 and explore further areas of cooperation with U.S. automaker Ford.

Diess said he hoped to have an outline agreement on cooperation with Ford fleshed out by the end of the year, with the initial focus on commercial vehicles. He added that a merger with Ford was not on the agenda and also said there were no plans to take a stake in the American company.

Mass producing electric cars will help the carmaker reduce the cost to the same level as current diesel vehicles, Diess said at a news conference in Wolfsburg, VW’s home town .

“Very emotional vehicles, high economies of scale, I think we will be the most profitable company in electric vehicles,” Diess said, responding to a question in English.

BEIJING (AFP): China will expand its ban on imports of solid waste, local media reported on Monday, almost a year after its first curbs caused havoc in countries that sent their rubbish to the Asian giant.

The regulatory action — which expands the prohibition to 32 categories of solid waste from the 24 banned last year — will go into effect from December 31, according to official news agency Xinhua, citing four Chinese government agencies.

Newly banned product types include hardware, ships, auto parts, stainless steel waste and scrap, titanium and wood, Xinhua said.

The initial ban caused worldwide problems as recyclers were cut off from their main market for waste material.

Globally, since 1992, 72 per cent of plastic waste has ended up in China and Hong Kong, according to a study in the journal Science Advances.

China bought up more than half of the scrap materials exported by the US last year, but that proportion has been falling with Beijing’s regulatory moves cutting down the types of waste Chinese companies could buy.

China says the policy changes are in line with a new push to protect the environment. They suggest Beijing no longer wants to be the world’s trash can, or even its recycle bin.

Equally damaging for recyclers have been more stringent policies on the quality of waste China will allow across its border.

For products such as cardboard and metal, China set a contamination level of 0.5 per cent last year; an extremely low threshold that required US and other recyclers to change technology and sorting techniques to meet the new standards.

Global plastic exports to China were forecast to fall from 7.4 million tonnes in 2016 to 1.5 million tonnes in 2018, while paper exports might tumble nearly a quarter, according to one researcher.