Bitcoin climbed to within $4,000 of all-time highs on March 9 as rumors swirled over an imminent buy-in which would rival MicroStrategy.
Data from price trackers including CoinMarketCap and Tradingview showed BTC/USD gaining 8% overnight on Monday, hitting $54,500.
BTC price up 8% on institutional narrative
After a correction, higher levels broadly remained, with press-time action focusing on an area between $53,000 and $54,000.
The move was music to the ears of traders, who had been waiting for a decisive attack on both $50,000 for support and a flip of resistance higher up at $52,000 to cement the prospect of the bull run continuing.
“We want to see this $52,000 area flip for support; if that grants you support, then we can start assuming that new all-time highs are on the board,” popular trader Michaël van de Poppe summarized in a YouTube update.
He added that despite current strength, Bitcoin remained rangebound and that a rejection of $52,000 would open up the likelihood of a “very sharp fall” towards $46,000 or even lower.
A look at buy and sell walls on Binance, the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world by volume, confirmed that resistance was lined up from $54,500 onwards, while buyers were interested in levels below $50,000.
Countering fears of a deeper correction, meanwhile, on-chain analytics resource Glassnode noted that previous buying at around $46,000 was some of the most intensive in Bitcoin’s history.
“In fact, if we look at the UTXO Realized Price Distribution, the on-chain support level at $47,173 is the largest since prices were $11k,” analysts revealed in the latest edition of its weekly newsletter, “The Week On-chain.”
“…We can see sustained and significant volume has transacted between $45.5k and $48.9k. This range now represents one of the largest on-chain BTC accumulation levels in history, certainly the largest since the last cycle’s $20k ATH was breached.”
A new institutional whale is born?
Institutions were likely the main source of the liquidity dredging. On Tuesday, multiple sources began claiming that the next 24 hours would see U.S. multinational computer technology firm Oracle Corporation announce a massive Bitcoin allocation in excess of 70,000 BTC.
If true, its purchase would fall just 20,000 BTC short of market leader MicroStrategy’s hoard, and instantly place Oracle among the biggest institutional Bitcoin whales.
In February, RT host Max Keiser similarly alleged that unnamed “sources” had disclosed details of the plans.
Others noted that MicroStrategy’s dedicated conference, a large part of which focused on helping institutions copy its Bitcoin purchasing strategy, was now six weeks ago. If others followed the timing of Tesla, which revealed its $1.5 billion allocation last month having performed the transaction in late 2020, the coming weeks should see multiple copycat announcements.
As Modern Consensus reported, meanwhile, Monday saw one of Norway’s richest businessmen launch a subsidiary which features Bitcoin as its sole treasury asset.
