By CCN.com: If you’re placing bets on where the bitcoin price is going next, the data is overwhelmingly in favor of a bull market. Crypto analyst Willy Woo attaches a whopping 95% or higher probability that the worst is over for BTC. Woo participated in an online debate hosted by derivatives trader Tone Vays, the topic of which was whether or not the bitcoin price has bottomed. Incidentally, the two traders couldn’t be further apart on the bitcoin price spectrum.
Woo is a technical analyst and spends his days pouring over charts and data. As far as he’s concerned, the numbers don’t lie. Bitcoin bottomed out at $3,100 at year-end 2018 and unless hell freezes over, it won’t hunt new lows. The BTC price is currently hovering at $5,351.
“I’m swimming in data and you kind of get an intuition about things. I’d say a one-in-20 to one-in-40 chance that this floor falls through. So that’s 95%-97.5% that the bottom is in. I’d consider if we drop below $4,300, they [bears] would be very lucky,” said Woo.
While he’s the most bullish, Woo is in good company, including the likes of Adamant Capital’s Tuur Demeester, who attaches an 80% probability that the bottom is in. Meanwhile, Tone Vays fired off several warning shots that there is more pain ahead, suggesting there’s only a 40% chance that the BTC price has bottomed.
In addition to the technical signals, Woo also considers the fundamentals in his bullish argument. Looking at BTC through the lens of an adoption curve, he said:
“[We’re] seeing a doubling in user base every year very consistently over 10 years…So what we see is this mapping of the world coming in and in this case the world coming in with capital that’s injecting into bitcoin.”
Woo and Vays both point to the dynamics in the Nasdaq and the dot-com era in their analysis. Woo likens the Nasdaq to bitcoin, saying:
“The Nasdaq was essentially the adoption curve of the internet. And bitcoin’s actually the adoption curve of the internet digital scarcity, the digital version of gold. As we move into this digital age, as we move into all these things we see in the physical world being eaten by software, we’re seeing also the need for digital scarcity and a monetary instrument that is natively digital and transacted on the internet. And so in that regard, I think it’s even more important than the internet.”
Not to be outdone, Tone Vays gave his bearish argument on the bitcoin price. He argued that “bitcoin has yet to capitulate from a fundamental perspective,” saying:
“Lots of these big institutional holders have not capitulated. The Novogratz’s and the Tim Drapers that have been holding onto these coins for a long time. I believe bitcoin finds a way to crush people’s souls…I believe the market will find a way to separate them from those coins somehow. And these are the big holders I’m actually waiting to capitulate.”
Vays was around for the bitcoin bear market of 2013-2015, and he uses the despair he felt during that period as a point of reference. He doesn’t believe people have felt enough pain yet in the latest bear cycle and as a result, haven’t “learned their lesson.”
With a bitcoin price that remains approximately 70% below its peak, however, many investors would beg to differ.