Not just Wall Street: Quant trader explains why Bitcoin price is going up

Sam Trabucco, a quantitative trader at Alameda Research, believes four general factors are pushing up the price of Bitcoin (BTC). 

The catalysts are increasing adoption, whales, inflows from other products into Bitcoin, and influence from other markets.

Alameda Research is a major cryptocurrency firm that trades a variety of cryptocurrencies and derivatives, with a volume between $600 million and $1.5 billion a day.

Overall accumulation and adoption are increasing

Throughout the past month, Cointelegraph has continued to report on the trend of whale accumulation.

Whale clusters form when whales buy Bitcoin and do not immediately sell. This typically indicates that whales bought BTC, sent them to their personal wallets, and have not moved their funds.

The accumulation of Bitcoin from whales possibly synergized with a profit-taking pullback in the altcoin market. Notably, when the decentralized finance market pulled back, Bitcoin continuously saw a significant rally.

Based on various trends and data points, Trabucco said the four abovementioned factors likely contributed to the Bitcoin rally over the past months. He wrote:

“So, first off, why ‘up’? There’s been a lot of discourse about this — some reasons for BTC to go up I’ve seen postulated include lots of institutional buying, increased adoption, ‘whales,’ outflows from faddish products back into BTC, influence from other markets, etc.”

Atop these factors, Cointelegraph reported that the Bitcoin exchange reserves are also declining at a rapid rate.

Bitcoin exchange reserves drop when investors increasingly pull their funds out of exchanges. Since investors often deposit cryptocurrencies to exchanges to sell, this trend suggests that there are fewer sellers in the market and a smaller available supply of BTC.

When positive fundamental and technical factors coincide with an overall drop in selling pressure, it could buoy the momentum around Bitcoin.

Macro influence could be favoring Bitcoin too

According to Trabucco, Joe Biden’s projected victory and the prospect of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are both positive factors for Bitcoin.

The support for Bitcoin from various tech companies including PayPal, banks, politicians, high-net-worth investors and billionaires are all likely pushing up the BTC price, the trader argues. He wrote:

“My take would be: eh probably a combination. I do think that Biden’s victory and the vaccines were net good for e.g. SPY which has both short- and long-term correlation to BTC in the COVID era, which contributed. And there are also legit a lot of traditional companies / entities — banks, hedge funds, random rich people, thought leaders, tech companies, Wyoming senators, etc. — signaling support for BTC, which both directly (buying) and indirectly (sentiment) influences its price up.”

In the near term, the roadblock for Bitcoin remains the $18,500 resistance area. Above it, there is little resistance until a new all-time high, after which BTC would enter the uncharted waters of price discovery.

Considering that the post-halving bull run lasted 15 months following the 2016 halving, there is a high probability that Bitcoin could peak in mid- to late-2021, as some analysts believe.

If so, the medium-term prospect of Bitcoin remains bright, particularly considering that many macro and technical factors are buoying the market sentiment.