Amid rising stablecoin inflow, cautious traders fear a dead cat bounce

The recent extreme volatility in the cryptocurrency market following Bitcoin’s (BTC) dip to $30,000 and the recovery to $38,000 has traders confused about whether the current price action is a ‘dead cat bounce’ which will see token prices head lower or a solid reversal that will set the floor for the next leg higher for the market. 

While BTC price still remains more than 40% below its all-time high of $64,863, bulls have managed to weather multiple attempts to significantly break below support at $36,000. 

A closer analysis of on-chain data and exchange inflows shows that Bitcoin's sell-off led to the market-wide downturn and Delphi Digital analyst Nick Pappageorge highlighted the fact that BTC inflow to exchanges “topped over 20,000 BTC in just one hour on Wednesday,” which was the highest level sesince March 2020.

FUD-o-rama destabilizes the market

One of the major sources of market turbulence identified by Pappageorge was the seemingly daily FUD headlines, including yet another Chinese government ban of cryptocurrencies and concerns that Tesla would dump its Bitcoin holdings. These back-to-back fear-laced narratives led retail traders to offload their coins on exchanges to escape a further price slide.

Pappageorge also pointed to concerns raised by a pair of hacks on the Binance Smart Chain which saw the price of PancakeSwap (CAKE) and Pancake Bunny (BUNNY) plunge, with the latter being drained of $45 million worth of user funds as compounding market fears.

The turnaround in sentiment this week has been in part fueled by positive headlines such as the formation of a Bitcoin mining council following a meeting between Elon Musk, Michael Saylor and North American Bitcoin miners, which has helped spark a turnaround in BTC and altcoins. The quick reversal so triggered the debate on whether the current market activity resembles a dead-cat-bounce or a trend reversal. 

70% nuke -> 80% bounce -> 10% dipDead Cat or Reversal pic.twitter.com/qefB6y4ahQ

— Darren Lau (@Darrenlautf) May 25, 2021

Experienced traders accumulate at lower prices

While many of the newer entrants to the cryptocurrency market have found the recent volatility nauseating, the more experienced investors jumped at the chance to accumulate BTC at a 50% discount as the number of new accumulation addresses reached new all-time highs amid the shakeout.

Well-known Twitter personality and Bitcoin analyst PlanB posted the following chart showing how Bitcoin oscillates around the stock-to-flow (S2F) model, showing the recent downturn is well within the standard range it deviates.

PlanB said:

“Buying opportunities like today are rare (Q1 2019 when I wrote the S2F article, March 2020 due to covid, and now). Life is all about choices.”

As for bullish signs needed to support a quick recovery, the May 24 Delphi Daily report from Ashwath Balakrishnan highlighted the “sharply rising” circulating supply of fiat-backed stablecoins, which has increased from "15 billion to nearly 21 billion in the last 5 days.”

While this could be a sign that dip buyers are “loading up ammo,” Balakrishnan was sure to note that “it could also just be stablecoin arbitrageurs” and stressed the importance of “ensuring that the circulating supply doesn’t drop sharply to confirm these inflows will be deployed.”

A record amount of dry powder is now available on exchanges but at the same time, an entirely new cohort of cryptocurrency investors who just experienced their first 50% pullback are now wondering if they should pull out the market or double-down on their investment. The more experienced in the crowd are betting that the market is headed higher but further volatility is all but guaranteed.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.