The Bitcoin rally heard ‘round the world that began on April 2, 2019 painted the first higher high on Bitcoin price charts since the price of the leading cryptocurrency by market cap reached its all-time high back in December 2017. The powerful surge many believe could have signaled the end of the bear market and confirmed that a new uptrend has begun.
The over $1,000 rally may have also been the work of a single, calculated and strategic actor, who may have precisely executed a plan that drove the price up as much as possible.
CoinMetrics: Committed Actor Executed Trades At Key Times to Maximize Price Impact
The massive green candle that occurred on Bitcoin price charts on April 2 had everyone talking, from brokers, to bankers, and everyone in between. The powerfully bullish movement may have been the final blow to bears that signaled the end of the crypto winter that’s plagued the asset class throughout 2018 and 2019 thus up until now.
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The move, according to crypto research firm CoinMetrics, was orchestrated across multiple exchanges, at very specific times where liquidity is the lowest, in order to “maximize price impact while trading,” the firm said. More interesting is their theory that the entire thing was executed by one, single “committed actor.”
Our theory is that a single committed actor went long and traded in a manner that maximized price impact. The movement in price started at 04:30 UTC time, the point in the day where global liquidity is at a minimum.
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
CoinMetrics reveals that the price movement started at approximately at 04:30 UTC time, which the firm says it the “point in the day where global liquidity is at a minimum.”
“Although this cannot be known for sure, such trades would have been designed to trigger stop losses and force a short squeeze through liquidations of margin positions and short futures positions,” they added.
The large price movement on April 2, 2019 occurred during the window of lowest global liquidity. It began at 04:30 UTC and lasted until 05:30 UTC. This time may have been deliberately chosen so that a committed actor could maximize price impact when trading. pic.twitter.com/vktxpGBwlQ
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
The entire move lasted about one hour, ending at about 05:30 UTC. CoinMetrics further suggests that the time was “deliberately chosen” in order to create the most price movement possible in the shortest amount of time, maximizing “price impact.”
Here's a closer look at our three exchanges of interest pic.twitter.com/yFgxBG2EEM
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
While conflicting reports across the web from various experts have suggested the move originated across three exchanges, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp, CoinMetrics instead claims the move began at HitBTC where roughly 500,000 Tether were traded for Bitcoin, then was followed by simultaneous buy orders executing on Coinbase and Bitfinex.
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Other theories crypto analysts have offered have pointed to mistaken programmatic buying following an elaborate April fools prank. Bots did appear to influence the move, but only because the initial actor planned it that way, and took out stop loss orders that further caused a cascading effect, sending the price higher and higher. As the whale had planned, the trades had a significant impact – enough to potentially end the bear market and ignite a new crypto bull run.
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