Analyst and trader Michal van de Poppe is laying out his short, mid and long-term predictions for Bitcoin (BTC) and the greater cryptocurrency market.

The analyst says BTC may be getting its mainstream mojo back after its recent surge above $9,000.

Today was one of those days that old friends all of a sudden start to ask whether its a good time to buy BTC. Last time was around June 2019.

Van de Poppe cautions that Bitcoin has likely hit a short-term ceiling and could establish a range around $8,500, giving Ethereum (ETH), XRP and the altcoin market at large enough breathing room to rise.

Massive move yesterday. Came all the way towards the support level of summer 19.

Not expecting to see a breakthrough, despite the euphoria. Calming down of BTC would trigger altcoins to bounce up in their BTC pairs and follow suit

Volatility should probably come down a bit in the coming days. Could still [see] a few $100 swings, but slowly decreasing. Range supports: $8,200 / $8,375-8,425. Range resistances; $9,000-9,100 / $9,300-9,400. Pretty nice playing field.

However, in the mid term, the analyst warns that vertical charts usually dont end well.

He expects BTC to lose momentum and experience a significant correction after the halving occurs, which is set to happen on May 12th.

This is my main scenario for BTC, still. Halving; buy the rumor, sell the news event with a selloff to occur. After that correction, bull market can start.

After the halving, Van de Poppe says hes bullish on cryptocurrencies as well as commodities for the next three to six years.

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Crypto Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Selloff Coming Heres Why Ethereum (ETH), XRP and Altcoin Market May Rise in Short Term - The Daily Hodl

Bitcoins halving is in less than three weeks away, and the biggest event in crypto has everyone talking and speculating once again. But while things are potentially looking bullish for Bitcoin, altcoins could get crushed during the explosive volatility expected when the BTC block reward halves in just a couple short weeks from now.

Heres why altcoins may suffer amidst the upcoming BTC block reward halving.

Bitcoins halving is at this point just days away an incredibly important event for the cryptocurrency and a true make it or break it a moment.

For the last few years, crypto investors have been holding out hope that history repeats, and just like the last two times it occurred, the Bitcoin halving caused a dramatic bull run causing BTC to reach sky-high prices.

The last time around, Bitcoin rose to over $20,000 and made the asset a household name, and put it on the same pedestal next to stocks, commodities, forex, and more as a viable financial asset that investors and traders both can look to for profits.

Altcoins, however, didnt make the cut. This smaller subset of the cryptocurrency asset class lacks the same acceptance and adoption as Bitcoin and is far more speculative in nature.

Altcoins are also highly susceptible to BTC price movements.

Related Reading | Altcoins Break Out Against Bitcoin After Six Months Of Sideways

Take the 2019 Bitcoin bull run for example. At the start of the year, it was altcoins like Litecoin that kicked off the rally in crypto markets, but later these assets were annihilated as Bitcoin price exploded from $3,200 to as high as $14,000.

Altcoin investors capitulated en masse, as looming concerns over a changing regulatory landscape began to unfold. Bitcoins acceptance by regulators made it the one crypto asset that investors could trust, and the capital leaving altcoins into Bitcoin further caused the number one cryptocurrency price to balloon.

The same could happen once again if Bitcoin price takes off with the halving ahead, and rockets to new highs. Altcoins, that have continued to lag behind the first-ever cryptocurrency, could further be left in Bitcoins dust.

Related Reading | This Class of Once Hyped Altcoins Is Headed To Zero

Alternatively, Bitcoin could suffer an enormous crash if miners suddenly panic sell and dump their BTC rewards, closing up shop due to the suddenly doubled cost of production. Crashing Bitcoin prices also doesnt bode well for altcoins, either, and could cause them to bleed out.

The main time that altcoins shine is when Bitcoin is trending sideways and lacks volatility. Since altcoins get crushed whether BTC moves up or down, any volatility ahead wont be good for the alternative crypto assets.

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Altcoins Could Get Crushed By BTC Halving Volatility, Heres Why - newsBTC

[Editors Note: 7 Explosive Cryptocurrencies to Buy for the Bitcoin Halvening was originally published in February 2020. It is regularly updated to include the most relevant information.]

The third big bitcoin halvening is coming in May, and according to our very own Matt McCall whose Ultimate Crypto portfolio has averaged a jaw-dropping 16% gain in 2020, against a market thats down 12% year-to-date thats a huge reason to be bullish on cryptocurrencies in 2020.

But, before we jump into understanding what that halvening is (also referred to as a halving) and which cryptocurrencies to buy for 2020, lets first understand why cryptocurrencies as a broad asset class have a bright future.

The core purpose of cryptocurrencies is relatively simple: leverage technology to eliminate the middle-man in financial transactions and make buying and selling things less costly and more efficient. Through the blockchain a decentralized public ledger of transactions that anyone can view, is consistent across the whole network, and is unable to be edited and/or updated unless the whole network agrees with the update cryptocurrencies are able to conduct and verify financial transactions without needing any central oversight.

That may sound like a mouthful. Its not. Traditional currencies need big banks to oversee and verify all transactions. Cryptocurrencies do not. This means theyre less costly and more efficient than traditional currencies, because theres no middle-man to pay and no paperwork to fill out.

Sure, there are risks to cryptocurrencies achieving mainstream adoption and overtaking government-backed currencies. But, lower transaction costs and quicker transactions are large enough value props to warrant there being a bright future for cryptocurrencies (even if they dont take over the world).

Now, lets take a deeper look at why cryptocurrencies will rise in 2020.

Two key characteristics of bitcoin are limited supply and constrained supply growth.

There are a fixed number of bitcoins in the world (21 million). The bitcoin world started with most of those bitcoins being locked in the system. Each time an individual updated bitcoins ledger (also called mining), the individual would unlock new bitcoins. But to constrain supply growth and retain incentives for mining, the bitcoin system is set up so that every so often, the amount of new bitcoins unlocked for mining a block is halved.

So far, bitcoin has undergone two halvings. After the first halvening in 2012, bitcoin prices rose about 8,000% over the following 12 months. After the second halvening in 2016, bitcoin prices rose about 2,000% over the following 18 months. In both instances, many alternative cryptocurrencies actually rose far more than bitcoin.

In other words, bitcoin halvings have traditionally been exceptionally bullish catalysts for cryptocurrencies. And that makes complete sense. Prices are determined by supply and demand. If supply growth slows, and demand growth doesnt, then prices should go up.

The third bitcoin halvening is coming in May 2020.

The number of bitcoins unlocked for mining one block will fall from 12.5 bitcoins, to 6.25 bitcoins. Because of this halving, bitcoins supply is expected to rise by just 2.5% in 2020 an all-time low for the cryptocurrency. Its expected to rise by less than 2% in 2021.

Concurrently, demand growth should accelerate in 2020, driven by the introduction of more financial derivative products, broader support from central banks and increasing recognition of bitcoin as a digital store of value.

Bigger demand growth plus lower supply growth equals higher cryptocurrency prices. Thats largely why Matt McCall, who has already picked one 70%-plus altcoin winner this year, thinks that the best of the big 2020 cryptocurrency rally is still ahead of us.

With all that in mind, I suggest readers keep a close eye on these seven explosive cryptocurrencies in the coming year:

Of course, the most obvious cryptocurrency to buy for 2020 is bitcoin. Over the next few months, bitcoin will be a direct beneficiary of slowing supply growth and accelerating demand growth across the cryptocurrency world.

On the supply side, the third halving in May will directly impact the amount of new bitcoins coming into market, and will lead to relatively slow supply growth.

Meanwhile, on the demand side, cryptocurrency interest will soar in 2020 as the third halving draws media coverage and public attention. Bitcoin demand will move higher simply because this is the gateway into cryptocurrencies for new investors. That is, as new investors enter the cryptocurrency market over the next few quarters, most of them will likely start by getting their feet wet with bitcoin.

Accelerating demand growth plus constrained supply growth will lead to higher prices for bitcoin in 2020.

Privacy is a top priority in the cryptocurrency community, and privacy-focused coins will likely win big in 2020. Thats why McCall has picked top privacy coin Zcash as one of his top altcoin investments for 2020.

Zcash, which is one of McCalls favorite altcoins in hisUltimate Crypto portfolio, is a pure play on the growing importance of privacy in cryptocurrency.

That is, the first wave of cryptocurrencies was all about decentralization

Existing currency valuation models do not quite take into consideration decentralization a potentially distinguishing feature of cryptocurrencies, says Professor William Cong of Cornell University.

Now that cryptocurrencies have gained more mainstream traction and are starting to exhibit staying power, its time for another distinguishing feature to emerge privacy. Privacy is one of the more important and discussed characteristics in both the crypto world and the financial transaction world at large.

As the importance of privacy grows in the crypto world, privacy coins will outperform, and Zcash looks particularly primed to outperform given the companys recent pivot into private mobile transactions.

A leading altcoin positioned for potentially big gains in 2020 is Ripple.

Ripple is a company which leverages blockchain technology to enable banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporations to send money globally, usually using the companys cryptocurrency, XRP.

In many ways, then, Ripple is the infrastructure behind cross-border cryptocurrency payments.

As cryptos gain more mainstream traction, Ripple is adding more and more banks and various other customers to its network. Most recently, the National Bank of Egypt just partnered with Ripple.

More and more banks will partner with Ripple in 2020 as cryptocurrency awareness and demand rises. As it does, the price of XRP will rise, too.

One of the more interesting cryptocurrencies to watch in 2020 and which could explode higher is Basic Attention Token.

The core idea behind BAT is pretty simple. The digital advertising model is broken, in that user and advertiser incentives are not aligned. Instead, they run opposite one another. That is, advertisers want users to watch their ads, while consumers want to skip the ads.

The idea of BAT is to realign the incentive structure in the digital ad network so that user and advertiser incentives match one another.

To do this, users get paid Basic Attention Tokens to watch ads in the Brave browser, so that they are now financially incentivized to watch the ad. The end goal, of course, is that more consumers watch ads, and advertisers sell more product/generate more brand awareness.

Its a pretty smart business model.

And, as cryptocurrencies gain more mainstream consumer traction in 2020, this smart model for compensating users to watch ads should similarly gain traction. As it does, the price of BAT should rise.

One of the hottest cryptocurrencies, and one which Matt McCall thinks will remain red hot for the foreseeable future, is Chainlink.

In his Ultimate Crypto portfolio, Matt first recommended Chainlink in early January at a price of $2.09. Today, Chainlink trades hands at $3.66, up a whopping 75% in just four months. Whats more, that 75% return over the past four months, follows a 450% return in 2019.

In other words, Chainlink has been scorching hot. Strengthening fundamentals imply that it will remain hot for the foreseeable future.

Specifically, Chainlink leverages blockchain technology to create smart contracts, which are essentially self-executing contracts that can be executed without central oversight.

But businesses have been slow to adopt smart contracts because data is integral to executing these smart contracts, and there hasnt yet been a reliable way to connect external data with the smart contract.

Thats exactly what Chainlink does. So, they provide a very necessary gateway to usher in broader adoption of smart contracts. This adoption uptake in 2020 will provide a natural tailwind for LINK, and the coins red-hot rally will likely persist.

The Synthetix Network Token is a cool platform in the ethereum ecosystem which leverages blockchain technology to help bridge the gap between the often very obscure cryptocurrency world, and the far more tangible traditional asset world.

That is, in the Synthetix Network, there are Synths, which are synthetic assets that provide exposure to assets such as gold, bitcoin, U.S. Dollars and various equities like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). The whole idea of these synthetic assets is to create shared assets wherein users benefit from asset exposure, without actually owning the asset.

Its a very unique idea, and a promising project in the ethereum landscape. Because it helps bridge the gap between cryptocurrencies and traditional assets, it creates a level of familiarity and value that are often missing in other cryptocurrency assets. This familiarity and value ultimately position SNX price to rise in 2020.

On the smaller side, a cryptocurrency which look like an interesting speculative buy in 2020 is DxChain Token.

DxChain is a very ambitious project which aims to use blockchain technology to solve the worlds data computation, storage and privacy issues. Its a tall order. But, if it works, it could yield huge results in terms of DXC usage and value growth.

In 2020, data privacy concerns are front and center. As such, privacy-focused coins should rise. DXC is one of the more interesting privacy-focused coins with potentially huge long term upside.

While its still all very speculative, those attributes may make this altcoin worth the risk over the next few quarters.

In the bigger picture, its not an understatement to say that the opportunity in cryptocurrency in 2020 is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

New technologies are often undergirded by periods of rapid, exponential growth before either dying out in supernova fashion or normalizing to meet realistic expectations. So when cryptos had their first once-in-a-lifetime event in 2013 which turned every $1,000 into $93,000 the spectating world thought they had missed out.

Then came thenextlife-changing event in 2017, turning every $5,000 into $123,000 thatwas assuredly the big boom that you either rode to 25x gains or, well, you didnt, right? Wrong.

Cryptocurrencies are unlike any trend weve ever seen before, and there will be another opportunity for investors to turn a fistful of dollars intomillionsof dollars.

The key to this explosion is the Halvening. Dont miss out this time!

Luke Lango is a Markets Analyst for InvestorPlace. He has been professionally analyzing stocks for several years, previously working at various hedge funds and currently running his own investment fund in San Diego. A Caltech graduate, Luke has consistently been recognized as one of the worlds top stock pickers by various other analysts and platforms, and has developed a reputation for leveraging his technology background to identify growth stocks that deliver outstanding returns. Luke is also the founder of Fantastic, a social discovery company backed by an LA-based internet venture firm.As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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7 Explosive Cryptocurrencies to Buy for the Bitcoin Halvening - Investorplace.com

A pair of altcoins have greatly overperformed Bitcoin in recent weeks, going on powerful rallies both on USD and BTC trading pairs. However, a devastatingly accurate sell signal has now triggered across both of these crypto assets, potentially pointing to a retracement that could wipe out most of the gains generated against the first-ever cryptocurrency.

And if these assets do pull back, where exactly are the levels of support to watch for a potential bounce to occur.

The altcoin trading under the XLM ticker has recently staged a massive recovery against Bitcoin, right under the noses of crypto investors who have since written off the lagging cryptocurrency. XLM, alongside its altcoin cousin XRP, has been among the worst performers of the entire bear market.

The crypto asset designed for borderless payments has fallen by over 90% from its all-time high to as low as $0.025 at the bottom of the recent Black Thursday panic selloff.

Related Reading | Stellar Rally: Once Stagnant Altcoin Outperforms Bitcoin By 30%

But following that low being put in, the altcoin has bounced by over 30% against Bitcoin and has grown over 150% on the USD pair. However, these gains could soon retrace, as an accurate sell signal the TD 9 on the TD Sequential indicator just triggered on the XLMUSD pair.

The tool has accurately predicting may tops and bottoms in crypto, including Bitcoins historic $20,000 peak.

It wasnt just XLM that got some not-so-stellar news, Tezos also had the dangerous sell signal trigger not only on the XTZUSD price chart but XTZBTC as well. This indicates that a bigger crypto crash could be coming, one that takes Tezos down a few notches in both USD and BTC values.

Unlike XLM that has exploded right out from under the noses of crypto investors who have since forgotten about the asset since it lost its spot within the top ten crypto assets by market cap, the altcoin that replaced it Tezos has been the talk of the crypto market alongside Chainlink for much of the year thus far.

Before the big crash, the crypto token had grown well over 200% year-to-date, peaking at nearly $4 per XTZ token, only to fall to under $1. Now, after that low was set, the all-star altcoin is already up well over 175% once again. However, like XLM, the Tezos rally could soon be erased due to the accuracy of the TD 9 sell signal triggered with todays daily open.

Typically, a new high is set with the 9 candle, perfecting the sell setup, so more upside cannot be ruled out.

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Accurate Crypto Sell Signal Issued For Two Top Performing Altcoins - newsBTC

Litecoin news today After the bulk of altcoins in the digital asset market experienced massive losses last month and in recent days, today these tokens are making strides towards recovery. They are all following Bitcoins footsteps. At press time almost every top digital asset is recording gains. One of these tokens is LTC. The Litecoin price has now climbed from the $41 (the position in the late hours of April 22, to its current location of $42. This move is an increase of 2.5% in the past 24 hours. Let us see more about how Litecoin performed since yesterday.

A look at the charts shows that the price of LTC looks good in the short-term outlook. However, the coin may be facing strong resistance above its current position. At least thats what one crypto analyst thinks. According to digital currency analyst David Smith, after looking at the technicals for LTC/USD, the markets current performance is set to continue although LTC might face resistance. Per his analysis, Litecoins price retraced from its lower boundary.

Litecoin (LTC) Price Today LTC / USD

If LTC/USD can pass its midline channel, it will be more likely to see sustained growth. Hence, investors can take a long position. Alternatively, there could be another opportunity if there is a correction at the lower boundary after a retracement. Another analyst called, Alex Clay is equally bullish as well. He stated that the Litecoin price has broken the ascending triangle. According to him, currently, LTC prove now faces strong resistance. If the digital asset can push through this resistance, then investors can take a long position as well. Finally, if the price of LTC undergoes a correction after a retracement, there will be another opportunity to take a long position.

Despite the bullish outlook of most analysts, others still think LTC is still bearish and speaks against long positions. Analyst Oguzhan Sengor analyzed the long-term price of Litecoin. He has reached the bearish. A look at the monthly chart shows that the Tom Demark indicator (the signal that measures the demand for an underlying instrument) has entered the red region for the past month, which is a bearish sign for the medium-term outlook. Additionally, the price of Litecoin is below its monthly moving average, which another strong bearish indicator. Hence, the cryptocurrency analyst believes that the price of Litecoin will drop to the $13 area in the medium-term.

Ufuoma Ogono is a cryptocurrency writer with over 3 years experience in the cryptocurrency industry. She dedicates her time to sharing valuable information to members of the cryptocurrency community.

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Litecoin News Today - Litecoin LTC Climbs to $42 As Altcoin Market Resumes Recovery - April 23rd, 2020 - Smartereum