Fresh research by crypto analytics firm CoinMetrics has added to speculation that the sudden hike in Bitcoin price in early April, that prompted the current revival of the cryptocurrency market, is all down to the actions of a single trader.
According to the company, among the many theories surrounding the event, one of the most plausible ones was that of a single entity that placed an order for about USD 100 million worth of Bitcoin across several exchanges. It said that “a single committed actor”.
It then proceeded to provide evidence to back up its theory by posting a series of Tweets on its official Twitter account, beginning with the assertion that there was no news of significant impact during the one hour of the event, a time that was also normally very low in trading volume.
On April 2, 2019, Bitcoin’s price increased from roughly $4,200 to $5,000 in a span of one hour. There was no impactful news released during this time.
— CoinMetrics.io (we're hiring!) (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
It observed that most of the volume happened on HitBTC exchange on the BTC/USDT market. It also, however, does not rule out HitBTC’s action could have been due to wash trading. The large trading amounts were then observed on Coinbase, followed by Bitfinex. All three are among the world’s most active exchanges for Bitcoin.
It provides several charts to support their claim:
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 (we're hiring!) (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
A video showing the full history across all exchanges also shows a remarkably similar pattern happening on all three platforms:
Here's a fuller history of those three exchanges pic.twitter.com/j3KJxtr60h
— CoinMetrics.io (we're hiring!) (@coinmetrics) April 17, 2019
CoinMetrics concluded that a bull run could very well be on the cards, but that it was too early to say if a rally was already underway.
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