- 'Tis The Season To Be Spending
It might seem comical when you first hear it, but with major holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's planted right in the same month stretch—the end of the year is a notoriously bad time for savings accounts and investments, as many seek to withdraw yearly gains.
Setting aside speculation and the general (deserved) fervor around blockchain technology, few cryptocurrencies currently serve a purpose that benefits the average consumer more than cash does. With a few exceptions, cryptocurrencies are more difficult to use for everyday transactions, meaning many in the market are there for speculative investment. Speculative buyers do not necessarily equate to market stability—as many will seek to cash out on early gains rather than 'hodl' through the waves of market volatility.
The end of the year marks the time when these investors would be most likely to convert their winnings to cash, and yesterday—conveniently just a few days before Christmas—might have been the day that experienced the greatest impact of this behavior.
- Altcoin Overload
As mentioned above, following the initial surge in Bitcoin, most of the major gains we've seen in cryptocurrency this month have been in altcoins like Cardano, Qtum, Ripple, TRON, and Verge.
This has undoubtedly felt amazing to the investors motivated to leave the safe haven of Coinbase for the further reaches of the other exchanges—one might even say too good to be true. In the process of diverting funds from BTC, enthusiastic crypto traders may have also temporarily destabilized the Bitcoin market. If Bitcoin were just another coin, that would be all well and good, but Bitcoin is the "gold" of the cryptocurrency world—the standard by which all other coins are measured. So whether we like it or not, every altcoin is hedged (in some way) along Bitcoin's success—or at a minimum for the foreseeable future, its maintenance.
- Bitcoin Cash Confusion on Coinbase
Employees work at the Coinbase Inc. office in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. Coinbase wants to use digital money to reinvent finance. In the company's version of the future, loans, venture capital, money transfers, accounts receivable and stock trading can all be done with electronic currency, using Coinbase instead of banks. Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg
On Tuesday, Coinbase announced it would support buying, selling, and trading Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on its platform. Since the August fork, there has been major community in-fighting among the BCH and BTC camps regarding which is the "true" Bitcoin. Point being: energy is high around this discussion. Many have speculated that BCH would end up on Coinbase, but even conservative estimates in crypto circles were January 2018.
So it's no surprise that the noticeable and seemingly out-of-the-blue gains made in BCH in the days and hours leading up to the announcement caused some on social media to cry "insider trading." This resulted in Coinbase shutting down BCH trading within minutes to launch an internal probe into the possibility that insider trading occurred.
By the next afternoon, BCH was in full force again on Coinbase. But the impact might have been deeper felt than we initially realized. Many have at best a passing understanding of the differences between BTC and BCH, and seeing BTC prices drop so sharply when BCH jumped onto the scene—as well as BCH's perceived volatility—might have left a larger stain in their minds on the broader concept of cryptocurrency. And even for those who didn't pay too much attention to the hullabaloo, it might have just amounted to extra, unwanted confusion to keep them from participating further.
Next 3 in my next post
Source from.:- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2017/12/22/6-possible-explanations-why-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-prices-dropped-so-low-yesterday/#3d49489f3e2e