Bitcoin
The abrupt price pump last night excited many Bitcoin industry observers. Several analysts took to Twitter to claim, once again, that Bitcoin would never trade at prices below $10,000 again.
Other observers hinted that this is the start of another “historic” bull run, like that of 2017. Jason Williams of Morgan Creek Digital tweeted:
“We (all of us) are going on this ride again. There and beyond.”
Despite the sudden outpouring of bullishness on Twitter, Bitcoin’s latest visit above the $10,000 mark was very brief. Having peaked at almost $10,170 just before midnight universal time (UTC), BTC traded comfortably in five figures for around half a day before suddenly losing all those gains, and then some.
The price started plunging at 14:40 UTC and had fallen into the low $9,000 range less than an hour later.
The sudden pump and dump caused Bobby Ong, the COO at CoinGecko, to doubt the maturity of the market. With the above chart, he tweeted:
“What is this dump…we are still ages away from institutional adoption with this kind of scam wicks.”
It’s not immediately clear what caused the sudden increase in buying pressure that saw Bitcoin take the $10,000 handle once again. However, given that the recent Bitcoin halving has effectively reduced the number of Bitcoin being sold each day, going forward it will take less buying pressure to move the price upwards.
What’s behind the sudden dump is less clear. So far, the best explanation alluded to by Ong is that Bitcoin whales moved the price to take advantage of market conditions.
