Bitcoin On-Chain Analytics at Odds With Sub-$8K Bitcoin Price Forecasts

At the start of February, the cryptocurrency market was doing fairly well with many altcoins pressing above their 2-year old descending trendlines and breaking above the 200-day moving average on astonishingly high volume surges that provided investors with double and triple-digit returns on a nearly daily basis.

By Feb. 13, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $10,500 and bullish analysts forecasted that any day the $11,000 and $11,500 resistance levels would be obliterated, opening the door for a swift return to the $12K zone. Even as Bitcoin price rejected at $10,400 and pulled back to $9,500 investor sentiment remained bullish as many analysts believed a retest of $9,400 was inevitable.

All of this changed with the arrival of the coronavirus. Formally known as COVID-19, the virus had been making news headlines since late December 2019 but the last two weeks saw the fear of contagion spread to global markets as investors began to ponder the worst-case scenarios in which the spread of the…