By
Steve Muchoki
April 26th, 2024
It is for the first time that the BTC price is trading close to $25,000 since August 14, 2022. Whale participation and trading volumes might soon shift from altcoins to Bitcoin.
On late Wednesday, February 15, the cryptocurrency market surprised with a strong 10% jump adding more than $100 billion to investors’ wealth in a matter of hours. The world’s largest crypto asset Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at 11.5% up at a price of $24,700 and a market cap of $476 billion. With yesterday’s price pump, the BTC price has touched a new 6-month high while completely catching the bear off-guard.
Bitcoin and Wider Crypto Market
It is for the first time since August 14, 2022, BTC is trading above $24,200 levels. Any signs of increasing whale addresses could increase the stakeholders’ confidence further.
-
Photo: Santiment
Interestingly, Bitcoin (BTC) is outperforming all other altcoins of the top league in terms of percentage gains. Since the beginning of 2023, altcoins held a dominant position over Bitcoin gaining to the tune of 50-70%. On-chain data provider Santiment reported that there’s a possibility that whales and trading volumes could shift to Bitcoin once again. It noted:
Bitcoin is up to $22.9k, and it saw a nice isolated price pump approximately 6 hours ago that pushed it ahead of most of the altcoin pack. January was the time of alt recoveries, so keep an eye on whales & trading volume shifting over to $BTC.
The recent price rally markets 50% year-to-date gains for Bitcoin investors. Cici Lu, founder of Venn Link Partners, a blockchain adviser told Bloomberg: “People forget the free float of Bitcoin can be limited at times and when shorts get squeezed the price just pops”. Over the last 24 hours, nearly $85 million in BTC short positions have been liquidated.
BLUR Sees Huge Trading Volumes
Along with Bitcoin, the altcoin prices too popped up on Wednesday, February 15. The world’s second-largest crypto Ethereum (ETH) is currently trading 9% up at a price of $1,686. As of now, ETH faces immediate resistance at $1,700.
Other altcoins too have shown significant gains. The Binance Coin (BNB) is up by 7%, XRP is up by 4%, Cardano (ADA) is up by 5%, and Polygon’s MATIC is up by 10.14%. Whales are piling up their MATIC reserves in huge numbers. Over the last month, whales have added more than 55 million MATIC coins so far.
Whales are still bullish on #Polygon! 🐋💰
On-chain data from @santimentfeed shows that large holders of 10-100 million $MATIC have bought 55 million #MATIC since January 16, totaling ~$60 million. pic.twitter.com/gk2Ce0xyDO
— Ali (@ali_charts) February 15, 2023
On the other hand, BLUR – the native token of the Blur NFT marketplace – witnessed huge volumes on the first day of trading. The 24-hour trading volume for BLUR tokens has reached close to $1 billion.
After plummeting by 85% on launch, the BLUR token is once again on an upward trajectory. As of press time, BLUR is trading 50.36% up at a price of $1.13.