The price of Bitcoin has surged to its highest point since last November, reaching an average of almost $4,850 according to crypto asset price comparison site Coinmarketcap. Having broken the $5,000 mark on some exchanges, the Bitcoin price has since retreated back to around $4,720 at the time of writing.<\/p>\n
Many long-term commentators on the space have taken the sudden price rise as an indicator of the end of the ongoing bear market. However, others believe the surge to be simply another bull-trap-bounce and that lower prices are to be expected.<\/p>\n
As usual when the Bitcoin price shoots up, there is a mad scramble to explain the sudden shift. Speaking to Reuters<\/a>, Oliver von Landsberg, CEO of crypto firm BCB Group, offered one potential explanation:<\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues [Coinbase<\/a>, Bitstamp, and Kraken<\/a>], of around 20,000 BTC… If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges \u2013 there were in-concert, synchronized, units of volume of around 7,000 BTC in an hour\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Landsberg went on to state that the Bitcoin price action caused by these large, anonymous orders had triggered a flurry of automated trading. However, the reasoning behind the timing of the orders Landsberg refers to remains a mystery.<\/p>\n Bloomberg<\/a> did speculate that an April Fools article claiming that the long-awaited Bitcoin ETF had finally been approved by the SEC could have triggered a frenzy of buying action, perhaps even influencing the placing of the orders cited by Reuters. However, other prominent individuals from the crypto industry were less inclined to draw such conclusions<\/a>. The CEO of exchange platform Binance<\/a>, Changpeng Zhao, Tweeted the following:<\/p>\n anyone know any news? I have been asked "a few" times, but honestly clueless.<\/p>\n — CZ \ud83d\udd36 BNB (@cz_binance) April 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n