Summary of Bitcoin’s New Rush — Trade war? Fidelity? Or something else?
Weekly Summary, Standard Kepler Research
THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK
Bitcoin is rushing, so let’s take a quick look at what the industry might be thinking at the moment.
Bitcoin is up 30% in the last week, reaching US$8000, the highest price point since July last year, and a doubling in price since mid-December 2018. Bitcoin has strengthened relative to altcoins, and BTC market dominance is now up to 60%.
This comes as equity markets suffer in the fallout from the US-Chinese trade war. It is is worth noting that the Google search interest in Bitcoin is still relatively low, indicating that it likely is not the general public piling money into Bitcoin.
“What drove $BTC up this week? A handful of large players, that started buying in waves. Systematic buying. Clues to reach that conclusion can be found in volume, price action, funding, and futures basis and term structure. May expand on this later. Not retail driven.” — Economist Alex Kruger
Summarizing possible motivations, again per Alex Kruger, they include:
- Front-running Fidelity/Bakkt/Ameritrade/Etrade flows
- Front-running news
- Coordinated buying
The market is ripe with positive news: Bloomberg reports that Fidelity will roll out its institutional crypto trading desk “within a few week”, and Bakkt have announced rolling out testing for bitcoin futures trading in early July 2019.
The real reason for the rushing BTC price is likely a combination of the reasons listed above by Alex, or even more likely something completely else. Needless to say, these are interesting times — but beware of the “Global FOMO”.
Remember the Standard Kepler can meet all your BTC and crypto brokerage needs, just head over to www.standardkepler.com to learn more. Next week will be a bit special, as it will be the last week reaching out to you all via this weekly newsletter.
CHART OF THE WEEK
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Originally published at https://www.standardkepler.com on May 14, 2019.