Bitcoin price is registering a major rally in recent days. After falling to a low of $49,000 on Monday, the BTC price rose to $62,700 during the Asian trading session today. So BTC is up 24% from Monday’s low. BTC is up 7% in the last 24 hours alone. These are the main reasons:
#1 Easing US Recession Fears Fuel Bitcoin Rally
The macroeconomy is the clear driver of the price movement, as stocks have risen along with Bitcoin. Notably, the unemployment rate in the United States rose to 4.3% in July, the highest in the past four months. This led to concerns about a possible recession, according to the Sahm rule. This economic indicator suggests that a recession could occur if the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate rises by 0.50 percentage points or more from the lowest point in the previous 12 months.
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The initial panic was exacerbated by a jobs report that fell short of expectations, with only 114,000 new jobs compared to the expected 175,000. However, yesterday the story changed dramatically with the latest release of unemployment benefits data. A significant drop to 233,000, down 17,000, marked the biggest fall in almost a year, calming jittery markets.
Mohamed A. El-Erian, president of Queens College Cambridge and chief economic adviser at Allianz, explained via ” However, he also warned that “these high-frequency data sets are inherently noisy.”
Weekly U.S. jobless claims reached 233,000, up from a revised 250,000 — a relief from last week’s unemployment and growth crisis.
The details of this data release will be subject to a higher level of scrutiny for the purpose of assessing breadth and other distributional aspects.… https://t.co/fBqaJVs3sM— Mohamed A. El-Erian (@elerianm) August 8, 2024
Macro analyst Alex Krüger continues elaborated that “the market crash caused by last week’s unemployment and payroll data has now completely reversed, following today’s weekly unemployment benefits data. Price action and job creation data confirm what I suspected: that the entire stock market had a crypto-like flush-out, driven largely by positioning, narratives and mass hysteria, rather than fundamentals.”
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Krüger also warned against overemphasis on individual data points: “There is a reason why the Fed emphasizes not making decisions based on individual data points. Salary data can be very noisy. Yet much of the market went on a rampage last Friday, calling for a policy mistake and emergency rate cuts.”
#2 Short liquidations amplify BTC’s rise
Bitcoin’s price volatility has also catalyzed a significant number of short liquidations. In the last 24 hours alone, 52,413 traders were liquidated, with total crypto liquidations reaching $222.02 million, according to Coinglass. facts. For Bitcoin specifically, more than $90 million in short positions were liquidated, marking this as the third highest short liquidation event in the past five months.
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, clarified the impact of these liquidations on the market: “This Bitcoin bounce consisted mainly of shorts covering positions on the futures market. Open interest down, prices up.”
#3 Want to buy MicroStrategy?
As the Bitcoin price climbed higher, there was a notable increase in demand in the spot market. Crypto analyst Kiarash Hossainpour speculated“You heard it here first: I could imagine that this crazy late-night sale would come from none other than Saylor. The man recently announced another $2 billion purchase. Who else is buying in the illiquid hours after the US shutdown on Thursday evening? Exactly, no one.”
MicroStrategy, led by Michael Saylor, announced Last week, it plans to significantly expand its Bitcoin holdings in preparation for raising $2 billion through a new stock offering on the market, as reported in its Q2 2024 earnings report. The company stated: “We continue to diligently manage our equity capital and file a registration statement for a new $2 billion equity program.”
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $61,186.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com