What follows is an opinion.

Latest fear porn that news media is feeding masses and masses seem to be drooling over is Coronavirus. 

Danger seems real and we in no way undermine this outbreak, however, the fear fed to people seems to be out of proportion.  For instance, over 646,000 people die each year to flu.  Flu doesn't have the freshness and appeal as much as Coronavirus does for few reasons:  

• It is a newer strain
• We don't fully know what it is capable of
• There are rumors that governments are underplaying the real death toll of the virus
• It spreads quite rapidly and symptoms sometimes do not manifest until later

If you look closely, Coronavirus is a real danger, but it still not warrant the fear that is being fed to the public.  

The fear has already taken hold of the world financial markets with Dow Jones recording a fall in 1000 points. At some point, the fall was worse single day decline than that of 2008 crash. 

Most experts believe that this pull back is temporary and markets will bounce back fast and furious when the 'hope' of coronavirus containment hits the news.  In fact, some people are looking at this as a massive buying opportunity to benefit from this crisis. 

One man's crisis is another man's profit.

Given where we are, how does this impact the cryptocurrency market?  

To understand that we have to take a short-term and long-term view in terms of coronavirus tenure itself.

If coronavirus is contained in relatively short-term i.e., in next 3 months

In case the virus is contained in under 3 months from now, crypto market will bounce back and probably bounce back sharply and higher than pre-coronavirus highs.  This is for two reasons: people will some liquidated funds that they have on hand to deal with virus crisis and the bitcoin halving shock that will start hitting people which will create a temporary FOMO. Eventually, market should correct itself and find a slow and steady upward movement for the crypto space as a whole.  Coinbase-visa + Bakkt + Binance initiatives should all add fuel to the longer-term movement of crypto space.

If coronavirus is NOT contained in relatively short-term  

If coronavirus turns out to be more deadlier than we had anticipated and creates further lock-down in China, it could impact the bitcoin mining farms which in turn could reduce the hash-rate supporting the network.  If both China and South Korea get serious slammed by the virus - then we will lose network support and trading volume at once, this could send the crypto space into shock.  In our opinion, we could see bitcoin hitting below $5000 mark if this happens. 

When bitcoin takes the hit, it dishes out to the rest of the crypto space.

Innovation, mining, meetings, workshops, incubators and everything that we currently use to seep crypto into mainstream will be impacted and might push the crypto market cap further down.

What do we think?

In our opinion, governments will announce 'containment' of the virus in few months.  This will be because of the favorable 'warmer' weather that will naturally decrease the virus impact and gives some breathing time for agencies to come up with a solution.  Before the next winter, we would have already received 'precaution' for the virus.  By end of April - we expect that the 'seriousness' of this virus will die down and we will hear news about some solution from the agencies.  

This means, we expect market to start bouncing back right on time for the bitcoin halving. Do not expect a massive rally right away in the price action after halving - we anticipate it will be a gradual increase.

Will we be right on this call?  Who knows, we have to wait for 2 months to find out!

Read a full write up on "Will coronovirus Impact Bitcoin halving & Future".