- Bitcoin Rises to Almost 5 Month-High
Bitcoin rebounded from a year low on Tuesday following a report that an anonymous buyer bought a large amount of the coin over a short period of time.
The most dominant cryptocurrency rose over 20 percent to $4,998 a coin, according to Coindesk price chart. The virtual currency breached the $5,000 resistance level during the early hour of Tuesday before pulling back to $4,998.
In the last 24 hours, more than $84 billion had been traded in the cryptocurrency space, according to data from Coinmarketcap.
Experts, however, tied the surge in Bitcoin value to a Reuters report that an anonymous buyer bought $100 million worth of Bitcoin over a short period.
Oliver Von Landsberg-Sadie, Chief Executive of Cryptocurrency firm, BCB Group, said the Tuesday’s gain was probably triggered by an order spread across U.S.-based exchanges, Coinbase and Kraken, and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp.
“There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC,” he said.
“If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges – there were in-concert, synchronized, units of volume of around 7,000 BTC in an hour”.
Hunter Horseley, the CEO of Bitwise, said given the small volume of trade of the dominant cryptocurrency, “that order would be enough to have an impact”.
The large purchase could have been done by an individual or a small group of traders, said Zennon Kapron, Director, Financial Technology Consultancy Kapronasia.
Speaking over the phone, Kapron said there were many traders sitting on “significant amounts of bitcoin” who could “very well be behind the movement.”
Still, Horsely said: “Crypto is famous for a long history of volatility like this. It’s always hard to pin down the true impetus, and often the real source is not obvious.”
