The fourth quarter of 2023 became a fascinating one from the very beginning. Price action exploded with BTC breaking through three resistance lines and nearly doubling in value and SOL over 5x-ing. It was the 15-year anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Whitepaper and Sam Bankman-Fried concluded his court case.
$SOL's Big Bang
Solana is an interesting one, it has gone from $19.00 to over $100.00 this quarter. Why? I think anyone who tries to offer an explanation is most likely guessing. So, why don't I try and guess as well.
Let's start at the beginning, Solana crashed after the last cycle to approximately $9.00 and through Q1, Q2 & Q3 of 2023, it bounced in the channel (shown below) and ended up at the $19.00 mark that we saw at the beginning of Q4. Now, with reaching an all-time high of $259.00 at the end of the last bullrun, that $19.00 mark seems grossly low to your layman crypto trader.
Solana explosion through Q4, 2023.
Much the same as $GALA, which is trading at between $0.02 and $0.05 now, but with an all-time high at $0.82, people are looking at that and saying ‘if Bitcoin reaches all-time highs, everything else will reach all-time highs. Therefore $GALA will be $0.82 at some point and if I buy a load for $0.02 I'm going to 40x my investment’. You have to assume that is what everyone was thinking with Solana.
$GALA wishful thinking chart.
For clarity, Solana has one of the absolute best blockchain platforms. It has one of the absolute best NFT marketplaces, and it has remarkable backing from very public crypto market leaders such as Raoul Pal. With that combination, I believe once Solana broke through its channel that it's been bumping through for the previous 9 to 12 months, people started realising that they could make some money. This is when social media, YouTube, FOMO and essentially a collective of people can force price action to explode. Just like when we saw GameStop create millionaires.
Solana broke through the channel at the beginning of November at approximately $35.00, at this point everyone jumped on board and with everyone buying, price continued to rise. By the end of November, it was $60.00, by the end of the year it was well above $100.00, and the people who bought Solana at $19.00 at the beginning of this quarter, had just 5x their money in the space of three months.
I have absolutely no doubt that Solana will breakthrough its all-time highs of the previous cycle, however with such a meteoric rise, it is inevitable that we will see a consolidation. Where we see that consolidation to, I'm not sure. It's likely to be around the $60.00 mark where there is clear current and historic support. If you don't have some Solana, I would wait but once you see it reach that $60.00 mark, I will be buying as much as my portfolio allows with the expectation of 5x my money by the end of the bullrun.
Sam Bankman-Fried leaving New York District Court after being found guilty.
The End For SBF
On the 2nd of November Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of Fraud and conspiracy. After 15 days of testimony, the jury came to their decision after only 4 hours of deliberation.
SBF was found guilty of stealing billions of dollars from accounts belonging to customers of his crypto exchange FTX. He was also found guilty of defrauding lenders to FTX’s sister company, Alameda Research, which held FTX customer funds in its bank account.
During his trial, Sam Bankman-Fried said he learned in 2020 that FTX customer funds were held by Alameda, but he did not take action to safeguard them. When he later discovered in the fall of 2022 that Alameda owed $8 billion to FTX, no one was fired. Other charges Bankman-Fried was found guilty of include defrauding investors in FTX and a money-laundering charge.
His sentencing hearing will be held on March 28th, 2024, and he could face up to 110 years in prison. Once the sentence has been passed, I will write a full article detailing the trial, verdict, sentence and repercussions.
Satoshi Nakamoto's original Bitcoin Whitepaper from 31st October, 2008.
Satoshi’s Birthday
October 31st is of course Halloween but in the world of Crypto we have another reason to celebrate that date, and this year, it’s a big one.
Satoshi Nakamoto, whether a person or group, published a 9 page Whitepaper called ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ on October 31st 2008. This document would change the world. “A system which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”, decentralised finance, DeFi. Secured by using an in penetrative network chain. “The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work”. Blockchain, the safe storage and proof of ownership of anything digital.
A true pioneering moment in history. It should be celebrated like the first flight, the moon landing, the internet and other astonishing accomplishments.
The whitepaper does have some heavy mathematics, but it’s also written for the layman. Most of the 9 pages are in English and easily legible. I implore everyone to google it and spend 10 minutes reading it.
Satoshi’s whitepaper became the basis for all crypto and when we celebrate it’s 50th anniversary in 2058, everyone around the world will be discussing how it changed the world. We are just a little ahead of the curve.
FunFact : Satoshi Nakamoto has a wallet with 1,100,000 Bitcoin. It has never been used or sold. At the peak of the last cycle when BTC was $69,000 their wallet would have been worth $73 Billion. Making them the 17th richest on earth. If BTC reaches $272,000 in this cycle, Satoshi will be the richest person/people on earth with over $300 Billion worth of Bitcoin.
Chart Evaluation
It's always interesting when you try and evaluate a chart moving into a new year. As I've always said, narrative plays a very strong role in price action while crypto trading. We have the Bitcoin Spot ETF announcement predicted for the January 10th 2024 (White Vertical Line on chart), so the first 10 days of this new year may hold some positive price action.
We've had incredibly strong movement to the upside over the past three months and Bitcoin is creating a classic Ascending Triangle Pattern expecting to make its big move around the 20th of January (yellow arrow). Many scenarios can play out from ascending triangle patterns, however, sure is eggs is eggs, price action will move upwards from here.
If you look at the chart below, this is what I believe is most likely to happen through January, Q1 and through to the Bitcoin Halving in April (Orange Vertical Line). I believe we will breakdown from the ascending triangle and just seek some support along that $43,000 mark. We may well bounce around there for a month or two, but we will break through the $45,000 mark and go onwards towards $50,000 before the Bitcoin halving.
Prediction of Price Action, Q1 2024.
The chart below shows another possibility. We've been on such an upward trajectory that is completely possible we break down to the $40,000 mark and hover in that purple zone for a month or two. We could even break down to the $37,000 mark, but we will absolutely break through the resistance lines and power on towards $50,000 by the Bitcoin halving.
Possible breakdown in Price Action before a recovery in late Q1, 2024.
It is completely possible that we carry on this trend and breakthrough $45,000 at the yellow arrow and continue up to $50,000 or above through January. However, I believe the turn of the year will bring a little consolidation. Despite the FOMO and mass hysteria of the Bitcoin Spot ETF, I am a huge believer in “Buy the gossip and sell the news.” and I actually believe that on January 10th price action will go down and meet to the closest support line for a few weeks of consolidation before pumping back to the upside.
Predictions for Q1, 2024.
Predictions are always tough especially with the halving coming up and the New Year optimism. So don't take my comments here as gospel, more as educated guesswork. I believe price action will move from the $42,000 mark at the end of Q4, 2023 and by the end of Q1, 2024 we may well be at $55,000, having possibly consolidated and then powered through a few resistance lines.
The past cycles have told us the price action between the halving point and the following six months frequently stays the same price. On two past cycles we have seen price action rise and then fall back down to the same price six months later, and one time we've seen it crash and then recover to the same price as the halving day.
My prediction for Q1, Q2 and Q3 of this year is that whatever the price is on the halving day, it's most likely that by the time we hit Q4 of 2024 the price will be roughly the same. Moving into the middle part of the year, if we see price action drop, that is the ultimate time to buy before the huge bull run that we see in the following 12 months. If we see price action boom after the halving, then hold off buying anymore crypto until we see the inevitable consolidation through Q2 and Q3.
Then expect the absolute boom of a bull run. Possibly the last ever huge crypto bull run through Q4 of 2024 and Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2025, it's going to be exciting.
Comments