Tom Lee is back, with another round of Bitcoin bullishness on-air CNBC’s ‘Fast Money’ segment.
PermaBull Tom Lee Appears on CNBC Fast Money
On Monday, Tom Lee, long known as a cryptocurrency bull in the space, went on CNBC to dispel bearish sentiment against Bitcoin’s viability and more importantly, its price. ‘Fast Money’ host, Melissa Lee, pointed out that bears held three things against Bitcoin.
Firstly, that the Google search trends for Bitcoin are down, dropping to almost 25% of the levels seen at the start of the year. Many Bitcoin bears believe that this indicator shows that direct investment interest in this cryptocurrency. Although this may be somewhat true, this indicator tells far from the whole story. As well, Tom was quick to point out that the Google Trends indicator was not fully indicative of the price and popularity of Bitcoin:
“Google searches aren’t the leading indicator for Bitcoin, but instead, acts as a ‘coincident indicator,’ and therefore shouldn’t be looked to as some sort of BTC price predictor.”
In this case, this “coincident indicator” means that it moves in correlation with Bitcoin’s price, instead of preemptively signaling the price movement of the popular cryptocurrency. Lee also assured viewers that he believes that traditional institutions are still interested in investing in the space, despite the short-term bear market which the cryptocurrency market has experienced.
Another point which Bitcoin bears made was that trading volumes have plummeted since last year’s bull run. According to CoinMarketCap, trading volume is down by over 75% since the late December highs seen in the industry.
To help combat this supposed bearish indicator, Lee called the run-up last year a “parabolic blow off.” This essentially means that he thought that the volume seen during late last year was an abnormal figure, and should not be as relevant now. He also compared the daily figures to other volume figures from earlier in 2017;
“Compared to a year ago, (over) the same time (the first 6 months of 2017), Bitcoin volumes are up nine hundred percent.”
This fact affirming that he believes that the volume present in the cryptocurrency trading space is still “healthy.”
Tom Lee Affirms That Bitcoin Will Move In An Upward Direction
Finally, Lee addressed the bearish sentiment that Bitcoin has been struggling to break over the mental and technical barriers in the $10,000 range. To help assist his bullish views on the market, he utilized some research done by his market analysis firm, FundStrat. The Bitcoin bull said specifically:
“Bitcoin makes all of its performance in 10 days, in any year. So I don’t think that the fact that it is at the current levels is going to prevent it from actually rising before the end of the year.”
According to his prior appearances on CNBC segments, Bitcoin’s price movements can be mainly attributed to 10 days throughout a whole year. If you took out those 10 days in any year, Bitcoin would be down an average of 25% in that year. With this data, he made it apparent that he believes that a Bitcoin price surge will occur within the time span of a few days.
If Bitcoin somehow manages to continue its downward trend, Tom Lee made it clear that he believes that Bitcoin will hold price levels at the cost of mining a single Bitcoin. According to research from his firm, the current cost of mining a Bitcoin sits at an average of $6,000 and if history is any indication, that means Bitcoin should hold at $6,000 if worst comes to worst.
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