Bitcoin's been trading in a relatively tight range in the past week. No major moves to report since there has been a bit of selling from the $340's. All's quiet on the Western front.

The graph above shows the 24-hour Bitcoin volatility index from BitMEX in the past four weeks. Note how it began rising when we had the bull-run, peaked when we broke $500, and now we've been slowly returning to a fairly low volatility environment.

The chart below shows the price from Bitfinex over the past week. Fairly tight for Bitcoin standards, it's been a pretty choppy ride if you don't like scalping:

In a nice change from this rather bearish week we have been having, the market is starting to show signs of a bullish resurgence. 

Over at OKCoin the Weeklies contracts are at a nearly $2 premium to the Index, while Quarterlies are trading at an $8 premium, only days ago it was trading at a discount.

At BitMEX, the daily futures contract (the most popular and liquid product they offer) is showing a nearly $2 premium with 6 hours still to settlement. Overall this reflects bullish expectations of traders and it is breathing life into the market.
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Across the board we saw heavy buying in the spot markets. In the low $310s the bears were in charge, sentiment was in the dumps. Then we got some nice buying yesterday which picked up again today, giving hope to the longs out there.

If the upward momentum can be sustained, there may be a continuation of the bull-run and this bear-trend was just a small correction in the bigger move up that we could see the rest of the year.

But don't get too confident -- sentiment can change on a dime, and when you zoom the timeframe out a bit more you can see that we still have some resistance to overcome on the 4H chart before we can consider any major changes in direction:

The bulls have taken the wheel for now, and the remainder of the week will be a true test of whether we are in a bear-trend or if we have established a floor and will move up from here. 

​Happy trading.

After a day of chop and no moves worth trading, markets had a nice FOMO long in the European evening. As the graph shows, OKCoin Weekly futures had a nice move back up to the range in 330s that we have been in the past few days.

Additionally, Weeklies went from a discount to a premium, as Quarteries premium went from $2 to $7, indicating that trader sentiment is getting more bullish.

This could be the start of a revival of the bull trend, or false hope before we continue to drop. 

We finally got some action on Sunday as the weekend came to a close. As the 15M candle chart above shows, a sharp 7% drop in spot markets across the board hit. This was a clear sign that the bear trend that we have had since the $500 test is fully in play.

To get a better appreciation for this let's zoom out to the 6H candles:

 The trend is clearly down, and has been for a good week. And as I noted earlier, the premiums in the futures market have deflated to discounts and flat, and the CNY/USD premium has also disappeared. Barring some serious Chinese bull FOMO, we are in for a continuation of this bear trend in the short-run. This may be in effect potentially until 2016 where we may start trying to move back up as the Halvening and more exciting news comes through the pipeline.

There's also still hope that the $300 support level holds, and if it does, we could at least start carving out a range higher than we have been in most of 2015 with $300 being the resistance level. Year-to-date resistance becoming support would be a major point in favor of the bull case.

However, for now, the bears are winning. Protect your coins and hedge wisely. See the futures exchanges to discover your options.