Bitcoin Breaks $4000, Data Indicating the Crypto Markets are Shifting

Bitcoin has once more returned to $4,000 per coin. The warming markets could be attributed to a number of positive factors around Bitcoin usage, adoption, and awareness, However, assuming the largest driver of BTC price is speculation, a more important factor could be changing market sentiment.

Within the last 24 hours, the price of bitcoin has increased 2.02 percent from approximately $3,960 to $4,040 on major exchanges. Bitcoin is currently trading at $3,980 on Coinbase Pro for BTC/USD and $4,040 on Binance for BTC/USDT

Currently, the largest driver of volume is through Bitcoin derivatives on BitMEX, with XBT/USD trading at $3,970 per contract and occupying 11.7 percent of market volume.

As always—it’s difficult, if not impossible—to identify the precise reason for bitcoin’s shifting prices and volume. With thousands of factors at play, including unpredictable market forces, the change could be completely arbitrary.

The underlying reason could be related to fundamentals, with Lightning Network, transactions, and the number of wallet addresses reaching new highs within this quarter. It could also be shifting sentiment across crypto Twitter and the hundred or so most popular cryptocurrency subreddits.

According to the Crypto Fear & Greed index, the metric has increased from 17 out of 100, indicating fear, to 54 out of 100, indicating greed. The index pulls data including social media, Google Trends, market momentum, and volatility.

Over the last month, bitcoin dominance has also shrunk, going from 52.65 to 50.65 percent. When the market is greedy the dominance of bitcoin, considered a crypto “safe haven,” tends to shrink while investment in riskier altcoins grows.

That said, not all the data is positive. The amount of Bitcoin-related Twitter activity and Google Trends both indicate shrinking interesting in the cryptocurrency.

Tweets per day mentioning bitcoin have remained relatively flat, staying within its approximately 20,000 tweets per day average. Meanwhile, the Google Trends score for “bitcoin” has shrunk from 75 to 50 over the last 90 days, but that could because the market has become more nuanced in its interest in the technology, with the interest over time for “blockchain” going from 58 to 74 over the last 90 days.

In aggregate, it is hard to determine whether the markets will continue within its $800 range or if it will break out within this quarter. But, the data is looking promising.

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