Crypto Market Rises Amid ‘Altseason’ Hopes, Some Bitcoin Whales Selling
Following heavy selling earlier in the week, the crypto market moved higher on Thursday on boosted sentiment in stocks. However, some on-chain metrics could be a cause of concern for bitcoin (BTC) investors.
At 10:05 UTC, BTC stood at USD 41,215, up almost 3% for the past 24 hours and down almost 5% for the week, after strong selling action on both Sunday and Monday. At the same time, ethereum (ETH) traded at USD 3,104, up almost 2% for the day and down 2% for the week.
BTC price past week:
The reversal from a falling market earlier in the week appears to have caught some leveraged traders by surprise.
Between noon and midnight UTC time on Wednesday, more than USD 32m worth of short BTC derivatives were liquidated across exchanges, marking the biggest short liquidation event in a 12-hour period since April 2, per data from Coinglass.
Liquidations of leveraged BTC positions per 12 hours:
Notably, the move higher over the past day did not happen in isolation, but appears to have been triggered by improved sentiment in the stock market.
On Wednesday, the broad S&P 500 stock index in the US rose by 1.1% for the day, while stock market futures on Thursday morning in Europe are pointing to a more or less flat opening on Wall Street.
The positive sentiment in both stocks and crypto on Wednesday followed a new inflation report in the US that showed that inflation reached 8.5% for the month of March compared to the same month a year earlier.
According to some, the recent moves in the crypto market show a growing appetite for smaller, more speculative altcoins versus bitcoin.
“They are again outperforming bitcoin – they call it alt-season,” Joseph Hickey, global head of trading at BlockFi, told Bloomberg.
He added that crypto is “a momentum
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