According to data from Skew, retail interest in BTC has risen only slightly despite Bitcoin’s insane holiday pump. What does this say about the coming days, and will retail interest return?
Recent conventional wisdom says that Bitcoin’s price has been rising with increased institutional interest. Ever since Grayscale and Paypal started snatching up the cryptocurrency faster than it can be mined, it seems the price has climbed and climbed.
When BTC hit $25,000 on Dec. 25, the bulls did not stop. Interestingly, the ~ $28,000 price that Bitcoin saw on Dec. 27 happened on one of the quietest business days of the year.
Because of the Christmas holiday, many major banks, businesses, and other financial institutions are closed. But if the big boys were pouring the cash, who are these whales pumping the price even higher?
Retail me not
So, though institutional interest is high, is likely driving price, and is prevalent, the holiday pump cannot be explained by that alone. Indeed, between Christmas and New Years, retail traders must be buying up Bitcoin.
But according to Skew research, retail interest has not hit the levels it did in 2017 when the famous bull run brought BTC to near $20,000 the first time.
To prove this, Skew offered up a “Google Trends” chart of the word, “bitcoin.” In essence, this shows the measure of the amount of times “bitcoin” has been searched for and linked to in Google.
BTC still has headroom
Even though that the Bitcoin is at all-time-highs and the market cap of crypto is also hovering at never-before-seen levels, there is still room for growth.
In the end, some think that Bitcoin’s bull run is not getting as much mainstream media coverage as 2017-2018. Likewise, average-joes may have still not entered the market on hunches, hype, and fomo.
Another reason fueling the price could be bankers and other wealthy professionals’ end-of-year bonus checks. Some full-time traders may be putting their bets down on BTC, knowing how much institutional interest there is from inside the machine.
Likewise, heavy stock-market traders may end up with cash if they are taking profit or tax-loss farming by the end of the calendar year. Stock markets are hitting all time highs, and unless a final and miracle cure for COVID and an even bigger stimulus package come, it is hard to imagine what might drive stock prices higher.
Also of note is that Bitcoiners are moving their crypto into cold wallets and off exchanges. So besides newly mined BTC being bought up, it is also being made scarce. It seems like lots of crypto is going into cold storage, driving up price.
Common citizens and financial big-wigs may help pump the market even more once retail interest picks up. And when banks and companies, fearing financial regulation, come back to work in January, who knows how far they can take the price.
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