Volatility

This morning Bitcoin kept oscillating near its 50-day moving average, around $81.8k. That line, since about October 8–9, has become the support Bitcoin keeps pulling back to and leaning on. As of today, October 23, it still has not been broken. Since October 2, Bitcoin is down roughly 3%. Over the same window, the Nasdaq 100 fell about 4% and the semiconductor index (SOX) dropped 14% [1]. Look back one more round: from June 22 to July 29, Bitcoin was essentially flat while the Nasdaq fell 10% and SOX fell 29% [1]. ...

On Wednesday Bitcoin hovered in a narrow 83k–84k range, the kind of quiet consolidation that gives the tape-watchers little to talk about. Off the chart, a livelier contest was playing out between two economists over whether Bitcoin’s fixed supply is a bug or a feature. The spark was economist Lawrence H. White’s 2023 book Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin?, one chapter of which argues that Bitcoin’s fixed supply makes it too volatile to serve as a medium of exchange. Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, recently published a point-by-point rebuttal. [1] ...