Bolstered by stable trading volume, growing network activity, and increasing validation on Wall Street, the bitcoin price could be on the brink of a major move to the upside.
Writing in daily market commentary made available to CCN, eToro senior market analyst Mati Greenspan said that the stars continue to align for a potential bitcoin rally, making it increasingly likely that the most prominent cryptocurrency will soon break out of its holding pattern.
“It’s only a matter of time now,” he said of a potential bitcoin breakout. “Of course, the flatline pattern could easily remain for another few months and that wouldn’t be a bad thing, however, there are signs of excitement boiling underneath the cool price action exterior.”
Greenspan, who previously said that he thought bitcoin was heading into a “classic breakout pattern,” identified three catalysts that he said were suggestive of an imminent breakout, namely, a rising transaction rate, steady daily trading volumes, and the continuing growth of cryptocurrency-related activities on Wall Street.
Citing data from Blockchain, Greenspan notes that the number of bitcoin transactions per second — which plunged during the first quarter — has steadily risen throughout the second half of 2018. Since dropping below 2.0 TPS in mid-April, the transaction rate has climbed to 2.78 as of Thursday morning — a six-month increase of more than 40 percent. While still far below the 4.8 TPS achieved in late December, this present growth has occurred during relatively stable market conditions — not a parabolic rally. This, Greenspan said, is “a classic indication that we’re nearing the end of the flat cycle.”
Concurrently, daily cryptocurrency trading volumes, which steadily declined throughout most of the year, appear to have flatlined near $10 billion over the past several months, which Greenspan notes is “exponentially higher” than the average daily volumes seen during the last bear market.
But while volumes on cryptocurrency spot exchanges have flatlined, trading activity within the Wall Street futures markets are booming. As CCN reported yesterday, CME Group — operator of the largest U.S. bitcoin futures market — identified a 41 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in the average daily volume during Q3. On a daily basis, CME is handling approximately as much volume as Upbit, one of the largest spot cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea.
Taken together, Greenspan argues that these data points bode well for the short and mid-term future of the cryptocurrency market.
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