The "April 18th Tax Theory" Of Bitcoin Price Recovery

...that's the day after tax day for 2017.

There remains hope that our brief dip under $6000 several weeks ago remains the bottom of this Bitcoin price correction.

I know that's what everyone wants to hear in these, what passes for dark times (and would have passed for "the moon" one year ago.)

Sometimes, it does feel a bit like we are being taunted. Really, a double 666?

Luckily, I am here and willing to give you vague speculation based on the charts of others.

In a recent Reddit post that went viral (and was later removed for rule violations in the comments, and the OP going AWOL after opening the discussion), a user complained that his "life had been ruined" after he cashed out large crypto profits in December without realizing he had incurred tax liability by trading. He then proceeded to (presumably) donk all that money off into the world casino, leaving him with only a few alt-coins which crashed in value and are now nowhere near enough to pay the taxes he didn't know he owed.

Blaming crypto-trading for "ruining his life", when the actual problem was having an understanding of tax law somewhere between middle school and high school students, is rather hilarious. It does illustrate yet again how frequently entitled, helpless, and prone to blame-shifting the young generations are currently.

More interesting than another Grandpa-rant is Zero Hedge's coverage of the post, which veered off into more interesting territory by covering a theory floating around about cryptocurrencies being liquidated to cover tax bills. This would potentially account for a large amount of the recent price drop, if analyst Tom Lee's estimates are to be believed. He suggests that every $1 removed from the market via cashing out reduces total market cap by $25. He also calculated that cryptocurrency capital gains should technically account for about 20% of 2017 capital gains taxes in the US, a surprisingly large proportion

If he's right, we could begin to see a rebound after the dust settles from tax payments to the IRS in April.