Just as fast as bulls have brought this market to and past $10,000, bears have slammed Bitcoin, pushing the leading cryptocurrency down by around $2,000 in the past 48 hours.
XRP may be in for a harrowing next few weeks.
With this move, analysts have begun to fear the worse not only for BTC, but for altcoins too. According to legendary commodities trader, Ripple’s go-to cryptocurrency, XRP could drop to $0.16 – 50% of its current U.S. dollar value – should BTC see an “immediate correction”. Such a move would set XRP’s market capitalization to $7 billion, which is what it was trading well over a year ago.
Brandt seems to be backing this pseudo-call by noting that XRP against the Dollar is currently trading in somewhat of a wedge, which has held for around 9 months. Should that wedge fail to the downside, the cryptocurrency may not be in for a good time, that’s for sure. It is unclear where the $0.16 figure was derived from though.
Just a pertinent aside, Brandt has generally bearish on altcoins, recently telling a number of outlets that he wouldn’t be surprised to see 95% (if not more) of non-Bitcoin crypto assets fail with time. He has expressed some relatively optimistic thoughts towards Litecoin and Monero, but that’s about it.
On XRP, Brandt is under the belief that the cryptocurrency is “manipulated”, presumably citing the fact that Ripple Labs sells a large portion of the coins, which artificially depresses prices.
Ripple is a well managed company consisting of very brilliant people – it is also the bag-holder for a manipulated digital asset
– Peter Brandt (@PeterLBrandt) May 14, 2019
Brandt’s scary quip comes as Ripple has seen a series of strong fundamental news. Most notably, the fintech company has recently joined in a partnership with MoneyGram, one of the world’s most prominent money transfer firms.
As reported by Ethereum World News previously, this partnership, which is currently contracted to last for two years (which can be extended), Ripple will be MoneyGram’s primary partner for cross-border payment and forex settlement through the medium of digital assets. In other words, MoneyGram will be utilizing XRP in its primary business line – money transfer. For those that are fans of Ripple and its go-to cryptocurrency, this news is monumental.
Short-Term Bearish, Long-Term Bullish
It is important to note that Brandt is extremely short-term bearish on crypto markets right now. He claimed earlier this month that if BTC was to break its parabola, a strong correction, maybe even one of up to 80%, could be had. This is an obvious reference to the historical precedents that broken parabolas in the Bitcoin market lead to massive drawdowns.
But, he is long-term bullish, extremely so. In fact, per previous reports from this very outlet, Brandt claimed that the parabolic phase that BTC is seeing could take the asset to $100,000 by early-2020.
While this would represent a gain of around ten-fold in under a year’s time, Brandt accentuates that Bitcoin is very special in that it can embark on these parabolic moves time and time again, with seeming no signs of stopping. The career analyst writes, “no other market in my 45 years of trading has gone parabolic on a log chart in this manner. Bitcoin is a market like no other.”
