Bitcoin seems on the verge of seeing downside volatility during today’s trading session if bears can break current support. However, price action has been slow as all major narratives, including those from macroeconomic forces, have lost strength.

As of this writing, Bitcoin trades at $29,300 with sideways movement across the board. Low volatility has been suppressing BTC’s price action, a status quo that could persist until macroeconomic forces come back into the picture in September.

Nassim Taleb Lashes Out At Bitcoin Again

In the meantime, Bitcoin critics are using the drop in volatility, and trading volume, to support their arguments against the cryptocurrency. Wall Street operator, professor, and author Nassim Taleb stands among the latter.

Via his X account, Taleb showed his almost 1 million followers the chart below pointing at the Bitcoin price and the decline in trading volume. Using the chart and the metric as a proxy to gauge Bitcoin adoption, Taleb stated:

When I said pple lost interest in bitcoin, it was based on this: BTC Volume is slowly disappearing, down >85% from the peak. As volume drops, manipulations become easier but, at some point, manipulators will need to exit. This is how Open Ponzis implode.

The chart above shows BTC declining trading volume since 2020 when the cryptocurrency entered a rally that took it from a low of around $3,000 during a “Black Swan” event, the COVID-19 pandemic, to an all-time high of $69,000.

At that time, similar to today, BTC and the crypto market spend years in a “Crypto Winter” with declining prices. Once the sector rallied, many jumped in on the action swelling the trading volume to an all-time high.

In that sense, Taleb seems to be hinting at a downside for the price of the cryptocurrency following a rise in price with low trading volume, which often leads to a decline.

One crypto investor tried to show Taleb a different version of the chart above, which goes back to 2014 when the cryptocurrency was trading just above $100. The user pointed out that BTC has seen periods of volatile volumes as the cryptocurrency became a mainstream asset.

However, Taleb dismissed the user with the following:

Imbecile, if you knew how to read the chart you’d see only now a rise in price WITH DROP in volume.

The Black Swan author has been a Bitcoin critic, comparing the cryptocurrency with a “cult” and predicting that the sector will eventually “fade.”

Cover image on Unsplash, chart from Tradingview

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ August 11, 2023 9:00 pm