Ledger Cast Hosts Say Bitcoin Has Found a Floor in the Low $9,000s

Ledger Cast hosts Brian Krogsgard and Josh Olszewicz believe bitcoin has found a relative bottom in the low $9,000s after a steep correction. Their main argument is historical. The decline was a little over 50 percent, which sits inside the 30 to 60 percent pullbacks that bitcoin has absorbed in the past while the broader bull market kept going. In their view, the market has been working off excess rather than breaking down.

The technical case rests on a few familiar tools. Olszewicz pointed to a 141-day moving average, which he found somewhat arbitrarily on bitcoin's growth curve, and noted that price touched it in a way similar to earlier corrections. The 50, 100 and 200 day averages have also been acting as support and resistance. On a Ichimoku Cloud chart with doubled settings, price fell through the cloud intraday and then broke below it. That move was followed by a long-legged doji, a candle that can hint at a reversal but does not confirm one. On shorter timeframes, the hosts see a sharp drop that could form a double bottom, or price could simply keep trading sideways inside a horizontal channel. Fibonacci retracement levels are layered over the chart to map possible zones of support and resistance.

The sell-off also had a news component. The hosts singled out the collapse of Bitconnect and the fallout around its promoters, along with rumors of trouble at Poloniex. They called the hacking worries around Poloniex unwarranted and brief. Regulatory headlines out of South Korea and a further crackdown talk from China's central bank, the PBOC, added to the fear. The hosts said the South Korea coverage was easier to understand after a clear explanation on another podcast and a Reuters report. They also noted a CNBC segment calling Tether the hot new crypto, which they treated as a sign of how the story was being framed rather than as a market signal.

Development news was also on their list. Rootstock is set to bring smart contracts to bitcoin, Blockstream has released Lightning Charge as an early test of faster payments on the Lightning Network, and hashrate has been climbing. New mining hardware is expected to ship this spring, and Mimblewimble-style privacy features for bitcoin were part of the discussion.

The hosts stressed that the episode is educational and should not be taken as investment advice. Readers should do their own research before buying anything.