Bitcoin and the aggregated crypto markets have been in a firm uptrend for the past several months and BTC has put a significant amount of distance between its current prices and its year-to-date lows of well below $4,000.
Analysts now agree that Bitcoin’s recent bullishness has not been driven by individual investors and has rather been the result of institutional investors flooding into the markets through newly established gateways, like the one offered by Fidelity Digital Assets.
Bitcoin Surges on The Backs of Institutions
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading up nominally at its current price of $9,140, up slightly from 24-hour lows of $9,000.
BTC’s journey upwards first began after Bitcoin fell to its previously established 2018 lows in February of this year, when it briefly touched the lower-$3,000 region before quickly climbing towards $4,000.
After this, the cryptocurrency consolidated and slowly climbed upwards until early-April, which is when BTC incurred a sudden influx of buying pressure that sent it surging to $5,000. From here its ascent turned parabolic, leading it to recently established year-to-date highs of $9,400.
Many analysts and investors alike have been speculating as to what (or who) could be behind the recent influx of massive buying pressure, and one analyst is now explaining that he believes institutions are the prime suspect.
“The first time Bitcoin crossed the $9,000 mark was in November 2017. That price movement was largely driven by international retail demand – South Korea, for example – in addition to hype around initial coin offerings. This time around, however, we believe that institutional money is playing a much bigger role than it did in 2017, which is evidenced by CME’s record of futures volumes,” Michael Moro, CEO of Genesis Global Trading, explained in a recent email to MarketWatch.
When Will Individuals FOMO into BTC?
In years past, massive upwards surges in the crypto markets have been driven solely by individual investors, but this time there are multiple actors involved, which could mean that the next massive bull run will be significantly larger than those seen in years past.
Moon Overlord, a popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, spoke about this possibility in a recent tweet, explaining that bourgeoning interest in Bitcoin could once again lead its price into a massive parabolic ascent, which this time could send its price towards the six figures.
“Bitcoin is up close to 3X this year and hardly anyone is paying attention. The last time trends for bitcoin were this low $BTC was barely $2,000, now it’s almost $10,000. Bitcoin went 10X from this range last time, A similar push from here would put bitcoin at close to 6 figures,” he said while referencing the below image.
https://twitter.com/moonoverlord/status/1140967521098620930?s=21
As Bitcoin continues to slowly ratchet higher, it is likely that individual investors will begin taking interest in the markets, which could ultimately result in significant FOMO that allows BTC to surge past its previously established all-time-highs.
Featured image from Shutterstock.