Facebook Soared on CEO Testimony, While Bitcoin Nears Death Cross

Sead Fadilpašić
Last updated: | 4 min read

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in the U.S. Congress yesterday, and the Wall Street seems to have liked what he had to say. On the other hand, the cryptocurrency market crashed right before the hearing, and bitcoin (BTC) price is on its way to a death cross.

Source: iStock/DustyPixel

While the regulators’ response to Libra was largely negative across the world, the Wall Street seems to have liked the CEO’s picture of the project as presented during this hearing. In one day, from the time the hearing started, Facebook’s shares have gone up by 2.09%, to USD 186

Among other things, at a hearing in Congress in front of the House Financial Services Committee on October 23rd, Zuckerberg stated that the Libra Association is an independent organization and, should they decide to launch the Libra token without the U.S. financial regulators’ approval, Facebook would leave the project. Moreover, the CEO stressed that the Libra Association will not be “competing with any sovereign currencies or entering the monetary policy arena,” but “will work with the Federal Reserve and other central banks responsible for monetary policy to make sure that is the case.”

In the meantime, Zuckerberg sold USD 23 million worth of Facebook stock on October 23rd, and he had sold shares nine more times in October alone. The total worth of these ten sales is over USD 191.5 million.

Bitcoin nearing death cross

Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market crashed yesterday, painting the Cryptosphere red. At the time of writing (8:35 UTC), BTC is trading at USD 7,470, which is the price it last saw in May this year. It dropped 7% in a day, and 7.6% over the course of the last seven days.

What’s more, Bloomberg reports that the world’s most popular crypto is being pushed towards a death cross for the first time since March 2018. The death cross is a technical chart pattern showing the potential for a major selloff, and you can see it appearing when short-term moving average crosses below long-term moving average. Bitcoin’s 50-day moving average is nearing a cross below its 200-day average, which may signify a further sell-off.
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Money flows, in million USD

Trading PairOctober 22October 23
BTC/USDT1,5002,400
BTC/USD292464
BTC/CNY106155
BTC/EUR5393
BTC/KRW1437
BTC/GBP3537

Source: Coinlib.io
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“Bitcoin quickly broke once Zuckerberg’s testimony got started,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA is quoted as saying in the Financial Review. “Right now there’s a growing sentiment that we may never see Libra live and that’s just a potential setback for the entire crypto space.”

Meanwhile, Fundstrat Global Advisors’ research chief Tom Lee, who said in June that Bitcoin is just at the beginning of its bull run, and it will easily surpass its all-time-high, was also quoted as saying that “We remain risk-off for bitcoin and crypto but see a higher probability of conditions improving within the next 10 weeks. Thus, bitcoin below USD 7,000 would be an attractive risk/reward.”

Bitcoin price chart:

Source: coinpaprika.com

Cryptoworld’s reaction

Though the news of a market crashing is never particularly welcomed, it seems that people in the Cryptoworld are used to frequent and large drops in crypto prices, though the fall has been largely discussed. Ran NeuNer, CEO of Onchain Capital, a crypto investment and advisory business, said that “If this BTC dump is because of the Libra testimony, the market doesn’t understand Bitcoin and decentralization.”

Additionally, Cameron Winklevoss, a co-founder of Gemini exchange, tweeted that one can see how young and misunderstood the asset is just form the fact that BTC wasn’t surging yesterday instead.

Bitcoin sentscore, or its market sentiment measure, dropped by 13% in the past 24 hours.

Source: Omenics

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Crypto Fear & Greed Index on October 24, 2019

Crypto market analysis firm Coin Metrics tweeted that the implied Bitcoin hash rate, or its computing power, continues to reach all-time highs, sitting at 115 exahashes per second, despite the crash, which is “largely due to Bitcoin’s average block production time consistently remaining under the expected 10 minutes target over the last 2.5 days.”

Furthermore, popular crypto analyst and trader Josh Rager argues that if buyers weren’t interested in USD 7,800 Bitcoin, they’re likely not interested in USD 7,500 either. “It likely goes lower w/ confluence support at USD 7,200 & below,” he says, “Even after a natural bounce there, it comes down to where large/aggressive buyers are interested. Take it level by level.”

Crypto trader and analyst Nick Cote said that we might be looking at a bearish market and even a price of USD 6,450.

Another trader and analyst, Nick Core, advises people not to overtrade.