Resilient Bitcoin Seems to Have Fully Recovered from March Sell-Off

Bitcoin is pushing higher amid optimism that the worst may be behind us. After a bloody March and choppy April, traders are expecting May to be more promising. With the halving event planned, there are reasons to be bullish—but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.

Bitcoin Staging a Comeback

March 12 was a bloody day for cryptocurrency markets. Some even speculated that it would take a long time for confidence in the market to return. However, April saw a rebound, and Bitcoin has gone on to fully reverse its losses. As skew (@skewdotcom) writes, the market seems to be going ‘back to normal.’ However, that’s only in terms of price. There are other indicators we should also be looking at. Futures trading volume, for example, seems to also show some promise. Yesterday, the Bitcoin futures market traded over $40 billion—an amount not seen since March 12. The CME has completely regained its trading volume, and exchanges like Binance now dominate the futures market. Futures open interest is also ticking higher but remains far lower than it was in February. Many longs exited in March and have not come back since. Liquidity overall has returned since March as well, but with some caveats. Some exchanges continue to see some slippage on their order books. Bitcoin volatility has also subsided after an especially volatile March, as BeInCrypto has previously reported. As it stands now, Bitcoin’s implied volatility has returned back to ‘normal’ levels, as @skewdotcom points out. Finally, social media buzz before Bitcoin’s halving seems to be spiking. Google searches for ‘Bitcoin halving’ are now far higher than what they were in 2016. However, that’s not surprising considering the space is much larger than it was four years ago. Moreover, the number of tweets mentioning ‘Bitcoin’ has been rising since mid-April. Overall, it does seem like Bitcoin is showing some strength before its halving event.

The Verdict

There’s no denying the macroeconomic picture still seems grim. With some 30 million Americans now jobless, the global economy is on shaky footing. [Financial Times] Supply-chains are backed up and struggling. However, financial markets are rallying. Bitcoin, too, is rallying. How will the next few months pan out is anybody’s guess, but the market fundamentals are something concrete we can rely on; and, at the moment, they arguably look good. Indicators across many different areas demonstrate that Bitcoin has absorbed and rebounded from the March bloodbath. Altcoins still have some catching up to do, but Bitcoin seems poised to do well in the coming weeks. What happens after the halving event, however, is still unclear. We will have to wait and see whether or not it is ‘priced in’ as some claim.