It’s a good week for Bitcoin and altcoins. Finally, there has been a reversal of fortunes and the bears have retreated, at least for the moment. What sparked the about turn of the bearish trend that has dominated the market since the beginning of the year?
The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is up 15% over the past week, although it has been outshone a little by Ethereum (up 16%) and Solana (up 25%) over the same period of time. This is not bad news for Bitcoin, as the rise in the altcoin sector shows that an appetite for risk has returned.
According to Coindesk, “the recent rally in bitcoin can be explained by new token accumulation, which is unique to the crypto market.” This refers to the purchase of more than 27,000 BTC worth roughly $1.3 billion by the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG). It promised that it would add BTC as an additional layer of security for UST, which is Terra’s decentralized dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Lucas Otumuro, head of research at IntoTheBlock, a crypto data company, told Coindesk that he believes there “appears to be a synergy between Bitcoin and the Terra ecosystem.” He went on to say, “UST benefits from having additional backing and bitcoin benefits not just from the buying pressure, but also from having a stable medium of exchange backed by BTC.”
But there is more to Bitcoin’s rebound than the purchase by LFG. The recent price bounce appears to be driven by demand in the spot market, which typically occurs around market turning points. There has been a rise in spot BTC volume versus futures volume, and an uptick in bitcoin trading volume across major exchanges. What we need to watch out for is a sudden capitulation to a sell-off. At this moment, an increase in buy volume versus sell volume could determine if the price rally has staying power. Thankfully, according to data from CryptoQuant there is a slight increase in the buy/sell volume ratio over the past week, which indicates bullish sentiment among Bitcoin traders.
We may see some corrections as the week progresses and Bitcoin aims to get past $48,000, but for now we are happy enough to enjoy Bitcoin’s fightback.