This bitcoin proxy has generated two buy signals at the green line, each of which produced a quick, handsome profit. However, I did not recommend buying last week’s third return to ‘x’ because BRTI seemed to have lost its mojo. The weakness preceded Musk’s rebuke last week to those who would suck up enormous amounts of electrical power to ‘mine’ the blockchain. This has hardly killed speculative craziness in bitcoin alternatives, most notably Ethereum’s product. But it did put the kibosh on bitcoin itself, casting at least mild doubt on the 72,148 rally target we’ve been using since early March. It remains theoretical valid, but I’d say the odds are about even that BRTI will slip below C=43,041 before it can get a running start on the next histrionic flight to who-knows-where. _______ UPDATE (May 17, 2:37 p.m. ET): Sellers cracked the 43,041 support decisively, presumably stopping out many bulls. The fact that the subsequent bounce, lightened of profit-takers, did not get very far — it triggered a mechanical short at p=45,627, actually — suggests BRTI will grope its way still lower in search of durable support. Should that occur, the most logical place for a bullish reversal would be from the 39,672 ‘D’ target of this pattern. Alternatively, if BRTI were to pop above the 46,638 ‘external’ peak recorded yesterday on the way down, that would put bulls back in command. ______ UPDATE (May 18, 11:31 p.m.): With today’s nasty relapse, bitcoin demonstrated once again that it is one of the easiest and most dependable vehicles to trade and forecast using Hidden Pivots. This is notwithstanding BRTI’s high price, which requires that we interpolate targeted swings using other, cheaper bitcoin vehicles. A short from 39,672 (see above) would have worked perfectly, generating a one-day gain of more than $5000 per unit with minimal pain. Since no one acknowledged the target in the chat room, I did not establish a tracking position. However, if you acted quietly on your own initiative, cover most of it near 39,672. _______ UPDATE (May 19, 11:33 a.m.): Sometimes we get foxed by obviousness — the old purloined-letter trick. In this case, bitcoin’s plunge has homed in on January’s Times-Square-billboard lows near 30,000 to test their support. When BRTI was gasping for air near 60,000, who’da thunk it would need t0 come down to as low as 30,000 to properly rebuke bulls fixated on $100,000 or higher? Today’s knee-jerk bounce from just above January’s low seems a little too obvious itself, and so we should be alert to the possibility that the low will NOT be retested. That would be passing strange. But my gut hunch for now is that the low, and the support line shown in this chart, will be tested and re-tested to death before bitcoin finds its footing and a little humility. _______ UPDATE (12:54 p.m.): I’ve just noticed something that has caused me to reassess the odds of a relapse to today’s lows: the bounce has occurred almost precisely at the p2 (secondary pivot) of this very gnarly-beautiful pattern. This has activated ‘Matt’s Curse’, which holds that when reversals come precisely at p2, the bounce often takes out the pattern’s point ‘C’ — in this case 45,829. We shall see, but in any event, my outlook is more bullish than it was 30 minutes ago before I noticed this.
BRTI – CME Bitcoin Index (Last:40,323)