The selling pressure was also being piled up by crypto exchanges. Many exchanges had net income of more than $1 Billion in 2017. They kept their income in BTC and ETH and not USD. Now in order to meet the tax liabilities, they are selling their ETH and BTC holdings which has resulted in huge sell off by the exchanges. Tax-related selling has certainly added to the tough start of the year for Bitcoin. After April 17th which is the tax day, we can expect a recovery due to the end of huge sell off which is the major reason that created a bear trap.
Now that is an interesting point on exchanges being part of the selling pressures for tax reasons. I believe in the after-tax season recovery but I am going to ponder this some more. I wonder.