Unsurprisingly we are testing $30k for the tenth time. Moon cycle seems to still be in play, so we can expect the market to stay depressed for another 4 days.
Large buffer
I'd say the chance of breaking below $30k in the next couple of days is slim. Not going to worry about that until BTC gains even more dominance. Won't be worried about a real crash until Bitcoin gets back up to 50% dominance, or until we've been sitting on the $30k line for a couple of days at low volume.
2013 mirror
It's funny how everyone said this run was going to be like 2013. I certainly didn't believe it. So what happened? It turned out exactly like 2013 but now everyone says we are due for a multi-year bear market based off of 10 days of declining price action. If it's not obvious by now, fear rules this market, and the world at large.
The crazy thing about the 2013 run is that it was so long ago that websites like Coingecko and CMC don't even have the data (theirs starts at April/May of that year. We have to jump into an archive to even take a look:
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/historical-price/
If we get a replay of this pattern the market is going to trade largely flat until the end of the year, exploding into a blow-off top mega-bubble of epic proportions.
Of course if we zoom in and cut out the mega bubble we see a much different story. The market didn't really trade flat at all, it just looked like it did because of the subsequent blow-off top. However, it is important to note that the local lows after the initial pump/dump were clearly in July. It's possible we are nearly out of the woods as this descending triangle comes to a point.
Also noteworthy is the fact that September traded flat in 2013, something that rarely happens, as it usually deflates a bit. I'll be quite bullish if we see a repeat of that this time around. Again, August made a great recovery, and I think we could see the same this time around as well.
To the downside, $22k is still firmly on the table as the ultimate low. Again, I almost hope this happens because it will be the first time in like a year that I'd be comfortable margin trading at that level.
Once again, the actual scary resistance line we have to worry about is this one. Even in the ultra-bullish scenario, I can't imagine not hard-bouncing off of this thing at least one time. Too many cowards in the market and sharks ready to take a bite out of them. September should be very interesting. There will be blood!
There's also a lot of weakness in the legacy market as well right now, which is why I assume the BTC market is so weak. Bitcoin usually trades with the legacy economy, and only breaks away shortly to moon once and a while before coming back in line with legacy liquidity.
Money flows like water.
This is why it's called liquidity in the first place. Even though Bitcoin is a hedge against the legacy economy, it's still connected to it and will experience the same temporary droughts. This is why many foolishly claim that BTC is a bad store of value: because it often crashes with the assets it's hedged against. This is an extremely short-sighted view that completely ignores the fact that Bitcoin is exponentially gaining value at x2 per year, something that no asset in human history has even been close to being able to achieve.
Even if Bitcoin drops to $22k, it is still perfectly doubling in price every year, that's what these people don't seem to get. Everyone is caught up on the roller coaster and never seems to actually zoom out on the chart and look at all the ground we've gained.
CUB
Unsurprisingly, CUB has missed all its deadlines for the second time in a row. Perhaps announce dates when there's no more work left to be done :D. There's always some random fire to put out right at the end that screws everything up. My rule of thumb for launches is to at least double the estimated time. Hasn't failed me yet. Can't complain.
Conclusion
I may have downplayed it a lot, but the market is in an extreme danger zone right about now. If we sit on $30k at low volume for too long the ice will almost certainly crack to the downside. Volume is already unnervingly low at $30700, so we don't have much liquidity buffer left down to $30k.
However, I am banking on this idea that because the alt market has done well we have an extra buffer there sitting in the background. Hopefully $30k cannot crack while dominance is lower than 50%.
On top of this additional alt-market buffer, we also surprisingly seem to still have support from the full moon, which will be here on the 23rd. As long as we don't flash crash within the next 4 days I'd say we're good for another two weeks after that.