US Bitcoin exchange traffic explodes as analyst says flows hint at new BTC bull run

Bitcoin (BTC) exchanges in the United States are seeing unprecedented popularity as a wave of adoption sweeps the market. 

Data from statistics resources Alexa and Similarweb shows that major exchange Coinbase now ranks within the top 1,000 most popular websites around the world.

Coinbase in top 400 U.S. sites

As BTC/USD circles all-time highs, its run to $42,000 in January appears to have sparked a tsunami of new user engagement with some of the most popular cryptocurrency trading platforms.

In the U.S., the focal point of institutional inflows into Bitcoin in recent months, exchanges Gemini, Kraken and Binance U.S. are all part of the top 10,000 global sites. 

While Binance just beats Coinbase in terms of worldwide visits, the latter reigns supreme among its domestic market, ranking 386th among U.S. internet users. The data relates to December 2020, with the crypto rush at the start of this year likely hiking exchange popularity even further.

Despite widely publicized system outages and other technical problems — phenomena which have plagued Coinbase throughout the years — its popularity remains clearly unaltered. 

"Coinbase had 1.3M app downloads in January. That's more than E-trade, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Sofi had....combined," Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano noted on Tuesday.

Coinbase currently ranks as the top crypto-specific finance app on the Apple App Store, with both Binance and Binance U.S. also in the top ten.

In a further hint that bad publicity is not as bad as it may seem, retail trading app Robinhood likewise saw a huge jump in app downloads last week as users and commentators alike complained about what they viewed as arbitrary restrictions on their actions. 

Withdrawals herald return to Bitcoin upside

As Cointelegraph reported meanwhile, Coinbase as a venue for large buys has become a useful bellwether for assessing market appetite to buy or sell. 

This week saw large withdrawals from the exchange to private wallets, something which one analyst suggested marks a continuation of institutions buying for the long haul.

"The strongest bullish signal is working," Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics resource CryptoQuant, continued in fresh comments on Wednesday.

"32.4k was the bottom and $BTC price surged +13%. But as I said, institutional buying is the strongest bullish signal overriding all other bearish signals. I expect it will go up more."

BTC/USD is trading at around $36,000 at the time of writing, up 4.8% on the day after hitting highs of $36,820.