Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have obviously had a horrible week. And while it’s foolish to try predicting where things go next, there are two big similarities between this move and the one we saw at the end of 2017, the last time Bitcoin made its peak.
The first is that just like last time, the Bitcoin peak came almost exactly at the point of a major milestone in institutional acceptance.
Bitcoin peaked this year on April 14, at a price just under $65,000. That also happened to be the exact same day of the Coinbase IPO, which was a major milestone for the industry.
It just so happens that in 2017, Bitcoin peaked on Dec. 17 of that year. That was basically the exact moment that the CME launched Bitcoin futures, which again, at the time was a major institutional milestone. So that’s similarity number one.
The other big pattern is the way that Bitcoin peaks first, followed by other blowoff tops in altcoins.
Going back to the last cycle, Bitcoin peaked in December of 2017, but other coins peaked in January.
For example, you can see that XRP (sometimes known as Ripple) actually peaked several days after Bitcoin had already started going down.
Again, it’s a similar story this time around. While Bitcoin peaked over a month ago, other coins peaked several days later. Compare Bitcoin vs. Ethereum over the last year.
Obviously you have to be careful being too aggressive in drawing historical comparisons. But crypto cycles seem to have some patterns to them, whereby they start with people entering Bitcoin, then migrating to alts, and then going hard into alts into the end, while the Bitcoin trade starts to lose its juice.
Furthermore, there’s also acceptance cycles (people in traditional finance gravitate towards the crypto siren song) and so it’s not too surprising to see big institutional milestones (futures launches, IPOs etc.) around peaks.
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