By
Steve Muchoki
April 18th, 2024
The crypto market momentum continues to remain bullish on the second day after Bitcoin leaped in price on April 12, 2018.
After a long time, the crypto markets were seen with the ‘Bulls’ taking the lead over the bears, while Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were seen making sharp reversal from their lows on Thursday, April 12, 2018. In just a matter of 45 minutes, Bitcoin was seen gaining over $1K crossing the $8000 level mark.
According to the data on CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin is trading at $8028.12 levels, at the press time. The gains resulted in the overall market sentiment turning positive with other altcoins like Ethereum and Ripple making significant movements in the northward direction. Ethereum has gained more than 17.5 % and is currently trading at $507.95 while Ripple with over 20% gains is currently making $0.62.
During the same time, a cryptocurrency named Mithril has literally tripled its valuations gaining over 200% being currently traded at $0.68. All in all, there is an overall rise of more than 20% in the cryptocurrency market valuations, which now constitutes more than $320 billion.
Usually, Bitcoin price movements, if in comparison to other altcoins, don’t take place simultaneously, as investors are often considered to be shuffling funds between the two. However, this was not the case yesterday, as the euphoric movement had caused the overall market to make an upside move.
Well, it’s nearly impossible to point out one single factor that contributed to the price rise, but it is being said that institutional investors took the charge of the markets yesterday by pouring billions of dollars in, which resulted in such a sharp price increase.
Expert Opinions on the Latest Price Movements
The opinion of experts from the crypto space started to pour in soon after the price gains. Bitcoin expert David Shrier told The Independent:
“Over the past two years, bitcoin has exhibited significant volatility. It’s important to remember that it is a highly speculative asset and a handful of actors have the ability to significantly impact the price.”
Mr. Shrier points out the fact that there are just a few handfuls of holders in the market that cause the disproportionate price movements in the market.
While talking about the institutional capital pouring in the market, Mr. Shrier stated:
“Bitcoin probably benefits from a perception of being a decorrelated asset, meaning that as other securities like the US dollar or the stock market might fluctuate in concert with recent events, we might see periodic ‘flights to decorrelation’ – which will become more exacerbated as more institutional capital begins trading in bitcoin.”
Olga Feldmeier, CEO of blockchain startup Smart Valor, shared a similar view while suggesting that yesterday’s price movement (in Bitcoin) could be due to a single actor playing the role. Ms. Feldmeier told The Independent:
“I personally think that this rise was due to a large institutional investor. Apart from [renowned currency trader] George Soros, there are a lot of institutions, hedge funds and big investors waiting for the right time to step in.”
She further added:
“As the price increase happened on crossing the $7,000 line, and came initially from just one exchange – Bitfinex – this indicated that it was pulled by a large institutional purchase order. Later it spread to other exchanges and marketplaces.”
Longtime Bitcoin proponent and enthusiast, Thomas Lee, who is also the co-founder and Head of Research at Fundstrat said:
“We still feel pretty confident that bitcoin is a great risk-reward and we think it could reach $25,000 by the end of the year. “
“It’s overdue. Bitcoin was incredibly oversold. When you look at metrics like price-to-book, which is ‘money cost,’ or our bitcoin misery index, it’s pretty much what you saw at the end of the 2014 bear market, not the start,” Lee further added.