Bitcoin’s recent travails are a reminder to retail investors to watch the whales, GlobalBlock sales trader Alexandra Clark said in a recent research note.
After dipping to $29,393, signs show Bitcoin is on the upswing, Clark said. A group of Bitcoin whales purchased a total of 28,377 BTC worth $841.9 million last weekend, their first activity since December 2018.
That has also helped some altcoins, Clark said. RUNE grew 25 percent in one day even as hackers stole 2,500 ETH from its liquidity pools. Also posting gains were Quant (20 percent), Polygon (20 percent), Axie Infinity (18 percent), and Compound (14 percent).
While they took some criticism at the time, Ruffer Investment’s decision to buy bitcoin last November was a wise one, Clark said. In the year to June 30, they made a 19.5 percent return, their best showing in more than a decade. While Ruffin sold its cryptocurrency, it noted the reasons that led them to buy it in the first place have not gone away.
New research released by Fidelity shows the percentage of investors planning on buying cryptocurrency has doubled from 35 percent to 70 percent in the past year. Nine in 10 plan to own cryptocurrencies by 2026. Rothschild Investment has been a big recent buyer over the past quarter as they have tripled their stake.
Major credit card companies are deepening their ties to cryptocurrency. Visa said its consumers spent more than $1 billion of crypto on goods and services in the first half of 2021. Mastercard is working on simplifying crypto to fiat conversions.
China’s mining crackdown has lessened the sector’s environmental impact as miners have migrated to less carbon-intensive energy sources and taken more inefficient machines out of operation.