The Bitcoin rally late last Friday added a dramatic 42% gain to its peak at above $10,000. The days before that saw seemingly disconnected “whale” transactions going to exchanges.
Chinese Traders Not the Whole Story
But then, the markets were on fire, with the common cause seen as “the Xi Effect”. The recent statement by Chinese president Xi Jinping that the country was taking a pro-blockchain stance, seemed to spark a market rally.
The most active traders, however, were not the Chinese, but Western markets, according to research by TokenAnalyst.
The Xi effect visualized: A look at #bitcoin on-chain transactions during the days of the 40% price spike.
Chinese waking hours:
# of Txns: 169K
Txn Volume: 475K BTC
Avg Txn Value: 2.8 BTCOther hours:
# of Txns: 175K
Txn Volume: 962K BTC
Avg Txn Value: 5.5 BTC🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♂️ pic.twitter.com/l1JgtGrLm5
— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) October 29, 2019
The level of heightened transactions continued and even expanded after the Chinese waking hours, pushing Bitcoin back above five figures. The TokenAnalyst reports that over 6,000 more transactions took place outside of the Chinese trading session, and moved over twice the amount of BTC volume.
It’s true that crypto markets don’t sleep, but this also shows that a rally in BTC is a self-expanding phenomena. Bot trading and automated activity, in addition to transfers between exchanges, may have added to the rampant activity.
BTC Transfers and Value Slow Down
Currently, the transfers over the Bitcoin network are on the decline. BTC saw around 300,000 transactions, as seen on a regular day. The value of transactions shrank in the past day, from above $1.9 billion to about $1.6 billion.
BTC on-chain activity and pending transactions often pick up during times of growing volatility, especially with growing prices. But the actual rally happens within an hour or even minutes, without warning.
The rally was followed by lowered on-chain activity as the prices unraveled. BTC sank to $9,124.93 ahead of the US opening hours on Wednesday, with the potential to erase some of this week’s gains. Trading volumes are still higher than usual at $27 billion in the past 24 hours.
It is difficult to estimate which exchange had the biggest effect or triggered the BTC rally. Most of the BTC trades are distributed evenly across crypto-to-crypto exchanges. However, markets like Binance and OKEx attract attention, as well as Bitfinex for its connection to Tether (USDT) transfers.
Smaller transfers continue, as USDT and other stablecoins allow for arbitrage and moving funds between exchanges.
10,000,000 #USDT (9,980,681 USD) transferred from #Bitfinex to #Huobi
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 30, 2019
Chinese traders, however, went on to support altcoins, and achieved robust gains for a basket of digital coins and tokens with interests in the Chinese market. TRON (TRX) preserved its gains at $0.020, boosted by the Huobi Global program to deposit TRON-based USDT.
Ethereum-based USDT is also highly active, picking up transfers in the past 24 hours, as shown by the Token Analyst’s data:
📢 24H #USDT ERC20 Network Stats:
💵 $USDT ERC20 On-Chain Volume: $2B (+28.4%)
👈 Active Senders: 31K (-4.0%)
👉 Active Recipients: 37K (+12.8%)Visit https://t.co/u90eafzR5J for more info
— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) October 30, 2019
The supply of Ethereum-based USDT has grown to about 2.023 billion, and is currently the more active stablecoin. Leading exchanges have switched to using this type of asset, and the token transfers are also related to price action.
Omni-layer USDT has also been highly active in the past day:
📢 24H #USDT OMNI Network Stats:
💵 $USDT OMNI On-Chain Volume: $882M (+219.3%)
👈 Active Senders: 8K (-8.3%)
👉 Active Recipients: 10K (-9.3%)Visit https://t.co/u90eafzR5J for more info
— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) October 30, 2019
As for BTC, most exchanges except for Binance see net outflows of coins.
🚨 24H BTC on-chain flows:#binance $81M in | $61M out#bitmex $17M in | $23M out#bitfinex $13M in | $12M out#bitstamp $25M in | $52M out#bittrex $5M in | $4M out#poloniex $3M in | $9M out#kraken $27M in | $47M out#huobi $68M in | $77M out
More @ https://t.co/u90eafzR5J
— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) October 30, 2019
BTC has settled to a volatility of 4.01%, with the fear and greed index at 53 points, up from 20 points during the recent sell-off event. At this point, the transfers have slowed down, and BTC seems to enter another period of relative stability.
What do you think about the recent BTC rally? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images via Shutterstock, Twitter @thetokenanalyst @Whale_Alert
