Bullish & Bearish Bitcoin Arguments For Long-Term

Shubham GoyalProduct Specialist

Since Bitcoin’s initiation in 2009, Bitcoin has gradually outperformed other traditional alternative investment classes, finally taking over gold in 2020. In fact, for a major portion of the Indian investors, Bitcoin has become the preferable and more trusted asset class. As Bitcoin performed exceptionally well amidst the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, crypto experts and analytics had hoped for Bitcoin to continue its winning streak in 2021 as well. However, as Bitcoin hit an unexpected low of below $30,000 in June, 2021, many bearish arguments are coming up, suggesting we’re entering a bear market.  

Bitcoin touched an all-time high of over $64,000 back in April 2021, but since late May, the crypto has largely traded between the marks of $30,000 and $42,000. As quite a large number of crypto traders hold bullish opinions regarding Bitcoin even when a massive Bitcoin sell off continues taking place, at the moment there are many back and forth arguments supporting both the bearish and the bullish sentiments. 

In this post, we have compiled the strongest arguments on both sides, so ultimately you can make knowledgeable investment decisions when it comes to Bitcoin, or crypto in general, since whatever happens with Bitcoin also hugely impacts the crypto market overall. 

Bullish Bitcoin Arguments, for the Long-Term:

• As Bitcoin goes through extremely volatile market conditions, various technical indicators are presenting positive prognosis about Bitcoin’s immediate and long-term future. For instance, Nick Mancini, research analyst at the crypto sentiment data provider Trade The Chain, had this to say: “Looking at Bitcoin’s future, we can see a glimpse of bullishness on the price chart”. According to him, the technical indicator called the Bollinger Bands (BBs) shows the bands on the chart currently tightening around Bitcoin’s recent price movements. Now this usually signifies a large move in a crypto’s price. Since Bitcoin currently seems to be trading on the lower bound band, experts are anticipating it to reverse in the near future, what with the recent sentiment spike. 

  What’s more, Mancini also stated that the forming of “an inverse head and shoulders” is being witnessed. As he explains, “Inverse head and shoulders have two shoulders, a head, and a neckline, and typically push bullish if and when the neckline is broken”.  In this particular case for Bitcoin, the neckline is the 200-Day Moving Average, which “has been a stalwart for Bitcoin price action since June”. 

• Bullish sentiments surrounding Bitcoin are further buoyed by the current, positive seeming legal status of crypto in India, and the subsequent volume spikes various crypto exchanges around the country have witnessed. While the RBI had banned Indian banks from enabling any crypto-related services back in the April of 2018, in the March of 2020 this ban was subsequently lifted by the Supreme Court of India. While there was some talk of a complete crypto ban in India earlier this year, nothing of that sort has come to pass. 

  In fact, as a PRS Legislative Research report suggests, the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill proposal has already been listed for introduction in the Parliament of India for discussion and passing. The bill is scheduled to be brought before the Parliament during the Parliament’s Monsoon Session, which was slated to begin on July 19, 2021. 

  It’s been stated that this bill includes the plea for the Indian government to consider and facilitate the creation of India’s own CBDC, or central bank digital currency, while forbidding private crypto ownership within the country.The news of this bill that will take us one step closer to the efficient regulation of crypto markets in India has caused an explosion of investments in digital assets within the country, hence the volume spike crypto exchanges are seeing. Reportedly, just in the month of May, Indian investors had collectively put around $6.60 billion behind various crypto assets, which marked a resounding rise of 615% from the $923 million of April 2020.

• The S&P Dow Jones Indices recently launched five new cryptocurrency index products, which are Broad Digital Market or BDM, Crypto LargeCap, BDM Ex-MegaCap (BDM without Bitcoin and Ethereum), BDM Ex-LargeCap (BDM without the Large Caps) and Crypto LargeCap Ex-MegaCap. The BDM  index reportedly includes over 240 coins. 

  As Peter Roffman – the innovation head for S&P Dow Jones Indices, suggests in a press statement that yet more crypto market indices are to be launched, there’s no doubt that this event will result in further adoption for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 

• Another major factor to back the bullish sentiment is that national cryptocurrencies- as in central bank digital currencies, are gradually becoming the norm. China has already tested out its digital yuan, reaching even $5.3 billion in transactions. Countries like the USA, Venezuela and Dubai have already joined the race. 

  As another win for Bitcoin, Venezuela has connected their national currency to Bitcoin- since Venezuela deems Bitcoin to be a currency more stable than their own. The government has issued a BV Wallet as their central bank digital currency, where the Venezuelans can swap out their existing currency for Bitcoin.

Bearish Bitcoin Arguments, for the Long-Term:

• As the bearish sentiment has spread into the global crypto market, volumes in both Indian and foreign crypto exchange platforms are seen going down. Therefore, while global adoption rates of crypto do continue going upwards, they still remain considerably low to make any bullish calls. 
• It’s highly unlikely that cryptocurrencies will be allowed to thrive as they are in the long-term by the various national governments, especially seeing the valid environmental concerns surrounding crypto mining being raised by figures like Elon Musk and the Chinese government. Especially in India, the current unregulated state of cryptocurrencies does further inhibit bullish sentiments. 
• As a major roadblock to Bitcoin’s widespread adoption, there’s also the fact that Bitcoin continues to have capacity issues. The scalability problems ensure that the Bitcoin network has a limited capability to process large amounts of data within a relatively shorter span of time. This is because the blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain are restricted in both size and frequency. However, there’s still a silver lining: while Bitcoin’s scalability issues are bad for this particular crypto, it’s actually good for the altcoins that come with improved scalability.  

And there were all the crucial bullish and bearish Bitcoin arguments! We do hope this post helps you make better investment decisions. As always, keep in mind that when investing in crypto, you should always be prepared to face the worst, since cryptocurrency markets are always exceptionally volatile.