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It’s Like 2017 For Bitcoin Again
I believe congratulations are in order for Bitcoin (BTC) holders. At long last, those buying the cryptocurrency in “winter” conditions have been vindicated. For those who have been living under a digital rock, the past 72 hours have been absolutely monumental for the crypto asset market en-masse. In what can only be described as jaw-dropping, BTC has broken all expectations in the past few days, with its price going vertical in a 2017-esque move. In fact, since last week, Bitcoin has moved from $5,700 to $7,500 — a move of 30%.
Yes you read that right — BTC is now sitting at $7,500, a level not seen in what seems like and almost is one year.
So, what is behind the move? Well, to be frank, there hasn’t been a clear catalyst. Yet, there have been a few theories thrown about in the technical, fundamental, and statistical arenas.
As Ethereum World News postulated in a recent report, certain indicators have confirmed that Bitcoin is in an upward trend. For instance, BTC broke above its 200-day and 50-week moving averages, signaling that the bear trend commenced in early-2018 is no more. What’s more, the Guppy and MACD on medium-term time frames have entered a green territory, asserting that the current trend is for BTC to move higher. Bitcoin might just be following these trends with no regard for fundamentals, with hype driving the price action (as seen in 2017).
There is evidence, however, that this move is fundamentally backed.
Researcher Kevin Rooke, citing data from CoinMetrics and Blockchain.com, notes that save for a few statistics, namely adjusted transactional volume (USD) and active addresses, Bitcoin is currently stronger than the last time BTC passed $6,000, October 29th, 2017. Payments are up 3.4%, transaction fees are down by 66%, the chain’s hashrate is up by a jaw-dropping 377%, and there are now 20% more transactions per block — all signs that Bitcoin is being used in a bear market. As many would like to say, Bitcoin is reckless.
While on-chain transactions don’t directly affect prices, some investors may be seeing this as a sign that interest is returning to the cryptocurrency space, and have thus started to accumulate in anticipation of the next full-on bull run.
And on the industry development side, things are also looking absolutely stellar. As news has broken about serious crypto projects from Facebook, HTC, Samsung, and about any other tech giant in existence, Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based financial giant, is expected to soon launch Bitcoin trade execution for its institutional clients. The most important part of this is that 20% of the 400-odd institutions the company surveyed have crypto investments, and 60% believe that cryptocurrencies fit into their portfolio in some capacity.
More importantly, TD Ameritrade and E*Trade, two retail-centric brokerages, are soon expected to launch in-house spot Bitcoin trading, creating a massive fiat onramp.
Can We Move Higher?
This begs the question, can we still move higher? Some honestly think it is possible.
The fact of the matter is, this current rally is largely driven by those already in cryptocurrency, not those not involved in the crypto industry. As NewsBTC’s Joseph Young postulated on Twitter, “existing money in the crypto market [is] coming back due to overall growth in confidence/comfort.”
Google Statistics would confirm this. Popular researcher Alex Kruger explains that the “Bitcoin” search term’s volume is still at lows, with interest purportedly being 10% of what there was at BTC’s $20k peak in late-December 2017. So, once the mainstream (eventually) wakes up to the current rally, which may potentially occur with the opening bell on Wall Street on Monday, more money could continue to flow in, theoretically of course.
Photo by André François McKenzie on Unsplash
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