What was it like. Bitcoin was in the $15,000 - $17,000 range and over 80% of all analysts were saying a move into the $10,000 - $12,000 area was imminent. There was a high level of fear in the market. What is the situation now? Let's try to reflect on the outlook for 2024.

▫ Sentiment. News feeds are littered with posts like "2024 will make you rich", "bitcoin is in the early stages of a bull cycle", etc. The mood of 90% of the audience is approximately as follows: "a slight correction is acceptable, but overall only growth is expected". It is necessary to realize that the crowd's expectations have already come true twice. The first time on the Uptober trend, the second time on the "Santa rally". The next crowd expectation is for growth on the Halving.

▫ Institutionals & ETFs. ETF adoption is probably the only infomercial on which the market is currently being hyped. The problem is that no one is writing about the true reasons for the rejections. The SEC rejected both 2022 (https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2022-01384/p-77) and 2023 (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1588489/000119312523282341/d720350ds3a.htm) for identical reasons: non-transparency of stablecoins, insider trading, illegal transactions, wash-trading, etc.

In an interview for Bloomberg, Gary Gensler clearly points out that the crypto market is still small for the trijeris market, it lacks compliance, lacks necessary laws and at the end added: "The SEC reviews all filings as they are made in the normal course of business whether they are from cryptocurrency companies or not."

▫ Blockchain, mining and centralization. Having done the research, it is clear that miners are betting too high on the upcoming growth. The number of mining pools has tripled in recent years. Only two mining pools control (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools) 55% of bitcoin hashrate, meaning the level of centralization is very high.

There are more and more incidents of direct influence (https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1727320369521160491) of the regulator on bitcoin transactions, as well as cases with deliberate creation of erroneous blocks.

▫ Technical Analysis. The whole year bitcoin has been moving in an ascending channel, the exit from which is usually downward. The asset also has one single clearly distinguishable extremum of $16,000. Since 2021 the price has been declining without breaking the LH&LL structure, followed by a month of sideways movement and growth without breaking the HL&HH structure. The simplification of the structure suggests that the catch is close. A consolidation under $37,000 will mean a false exit from the ascending channel.

Conclusions

Long expectations of that year were met. But there was a chain of events during this year, which indicate the end of the bull rally and the return of the price to $20,000. Even if a spot bitcoin-ETF is adopted, it will not lead to the results that are expected now. At least because history with ETF adoption has already been repeated in other countries at bitcoin above $62,000.

👍- if the review is informative

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