Bitcoin Moves #36 — A weekly review of what’s moving Bitcoin and crypto markets.
The price of Bitcoin grew about 12% this week, despite some volatility in the middle of last week. After breaking well above $50,000 again last Wednesday, Bitcoin crashed all the way down to $46,000 on Friday, March 5, as per OKCoin market data.
The BTC price has been on a consistently upward trajectory since then, breaking $50,000 on Sunday to rise above $54,000 Tuesday, a level only attained three consecutive days in its history.
This positive momentum is correlated with institutional investors remaining bullish on the leading cryptocurrency.
ETH has followed a similar path, crashing from Wednesday to Friday and going steadily back to near all-time-high territory since then.
TL;DR
- Bitcoin is currently testing resistance at $55,000 levels.
- The market cap of Bitcoin is back above $1 trillion.
- Goldman Sachs clients reveal exposure to cryptocurrency.
- Institutional players continue to add BTC to their balance sheets.
Bitcoin price movements
- Current BTC price: $54,400, up 12% compared to last week’s price near $48,500.
- 24H high: $54,800
- 24H low: $51,500
- 24H change: +3.6%
- 24H BTC volume sits around $59 billion, up 11.3% from last week ($53 billion)
- Total circulating BTC: 18,649,043
- Total market cap: $1,007,710,698,709
- Bitcoin dominance: 59%
- 30D high / low: $58,334 / $43,145
Bitcoin market cap reaches $1 trillion, again
Today, March 9, Bitcoin’s market capitalization broke $1 trillion for the second time in history. The last time it breached this level was on Feb 19, and it lasted for 3 days.
Although the $1 trillion moment was met with less fanfare across the industry this time, it still marks an important milestone for the legitimacy of the asset class.
Aker is all-in on Bitcoin and Lightning
On Monday, Norwegian energy group Aker — possibly following the example of MicroStrategy, which added an additional $10 million in BTC to its balance sheets last week — announced the creation of a new Bitcoin-focused company whose primary treasury reserve asset will be BTC. The new firm, called Seetee, will be entirely dedicated to investing in Bitcoin infrastructure, including via a partnership with Blockstream to use renewable energy for Bitcoin mining.
In a letter to shareholders, Aker CEO Kjell Inge Røkke cited the human capital in Bitcoin as one of his reasons to be bullish on the emerging asset: “When I realised how much brainpower goes into Bitcoin, I saw the future in the making.”
The CEO is also very bullish on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a second-layer protocol for making more efficient BTC transactions:
“Lightning transactions complete in milliseconds and can process millions per second with hardly any use of electricity. It leverages Bitcoin’s security while increasing speed + reducing cost to levels not achievable by legacy payment rails”
Last week, OKCoin announced that it had become one of the first exchanges to implement Lightning, a technology that allows for near instant Bitcoin transactions and 99% lower fees. Learn how to make the most of it here.
Seetee has also announced that they run their own BTC Pay Server, a free, self-sovereign Bitcoin payment processor that received one of OKCoin’s Open-Souce Developer Grants.
40% of Goldman clients report exposure to crypto
A Goldman Sachs client survey published last week revealed that 40% of the respondents report currently having exposure to crypto assets. Of these, the main cryptocurrency of interest to Goldman’s clients was reported to be BTC (42%), followed by ETH (29%) and stablecoins (13%).
This ties well with the report last week of the relaunch of Goldman’s crypto trading desk, which had been closed for the last three years.
Soros, Morgan Stanley among participants in $200 million NYDIG investment
Bitcoin investment and technology provider NYDIG revealed yesterday that it has raised $200 million, with Soros Fund Management, Morgan Stanley, New York Life and MassMutual among the most significant participants.
Since December, NYDIG has been a key actor to Wall Street’s Bitcoin onboarding, facilitating MassMutual’s $100 million Bitcoin investment last December.
Speaking to the recent wave of institutional adoption of Bitcoin, NYDIG noted in its press release that a number of insurance companies “own, in aggregate, more than $1 billion of direct and indirect bitcoin exposure facilitated exclusively by NYDIG, and held on NYDIG’s secure, audited, and insured institutional custody platform.”
On-chain trends
Crypto data site IntoTheBlock show that Bitcoin is currently considered “mostly bearish,” with three out of seven of its core on-chain and exchange metrics currently ranked as “bearish”, two being neutral and two bullish.
The bearish metrics are net network growth, large transactions and bid-ask volume imbalance. The concentration metric, which was bearish last week is ranked as neutral now. The BTC futures market, however — assessed by combining the futures price, volume and open interest — looks bullish.
Buy BTC on OKCoin in just a couple of minutes, with the lowest fees. OKCoin crypto exchange is licensed across the U.S.
