The year-to-date rise in the price of the first cryptocurrency appears set to continue. Analysts at Bank of America forecast this, according to Bloomberg.
Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss came to this conclusion based on the outflow of Bitcoin from exchange wallets to personal wallets. For the week ended April 4, the transfer totaled $368 million in cryptocurrency.
“Investors move tokens from exchange wallets to their own when they intend to hold them. This points to potentially lower selling pressure,” the analysts wrote in the briefing.
They noted that the withdrawals could be related to concerns about regulatory pressure on platforms.
On April 11, Bitcoin surpassed the $30,000 level for the first time since June 2022. Since December 31 the asset has risen by more than 80%. The Nasdaq 100 index over this period has gained 19%, and gold prices by about 9%.
The rise in cryptocurrency followed a decline in liquidity and trading volumes in the crypto market, as a consequence of the collapse of FTX and several other industry players.
“Bitcoin has stopped reacting to bad news. This is a clear sign of a strong buyer’s market,” commented Nathan Batchelor, managing partner at Biyond Trader.
Bank of America analysts noted that, unlike digital gold, Ethereum recorded the largest weekly inflow of coins to exchanges in 2023. Potentially this could put selling pressure on the price. An additional influence could come from the Shapella update, which will open the possibility of withdrawing Ether from the staking.
Experts at JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity have differently assessed the potential impact of the hard fork on Ethereum’s price trajectory.