CoinDesk data shows that Bitcoin hit a high of $19,864.15, breaking the intraday record of $19,783.21 set on December 18, 2017. As for the difference from the previous bull market, analysts generally believe that the current market enthusiasm mainly comes from the pursuit of a new wave of North American institutional investors.
John Todaro, the head of institutional research at the cryptocurrency analysis company TradeBlock, said: "The timing of the rise can be seen, which coincides with the typical opening hours in the United States." And on the trading platform mainly for institutions, the transaction volume is also higher.
When Bitcoin hit $19,000 last week, there was a downward adjustment. The source was related to a series of tweets posted on Twitter by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong during Thanksgiving. He said that there is news that the US government will introduce relevant policies to regulate Bitcoin.
In the turbulent mood affected by the news, a large number of US institutional investors and traders did not actively trade. On Monday morning, a large number of institutional traders flocked back to the market to buy the bottom.
Of course, not all data related to Bitcoin is bullish in the short term. Data provider CryptoQuant said that since the Thanksgiving sell-off, Bitcoin's inflows into exchanges have exceeded the outflows.
"Who is buying" has become the biggest difference between this round of rising and the bull market three years ago.
After setting a record high in December 2017, the price of Bitcoin quickly dropped to $5,947.40 in just two months. At the time, the market widely attributed the rise of Bitcoin to an increase in active retail investors.
Before this round of gains, the term "institutional investor" in the cryptocurrency world also represented various crypto quantitative companies, bitcoin miners and early investors. Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Bequant, a major digital asset broker, believes that the composition of market participants has gradually changed this year. He believes that the continued inflow of funds into Grayscale Trust and other exchange-traded product (ETP) issuers including 21Shares and CoinShares proves that institutions in the traditional financial market are also investing in Bitcoin.
Vinokourov said: "The bulls partly led to a surge, which in turn attracted momentum-driven investment, which often pushed up the bullish opportunity further."