Bitcoin Price Surge to $10K Followed by ‘Strange’ Exchange Premium

Published at: June 2, 2020

Bitcoin (BTC) hitting $10,000 has been frantic activity on exchanges — investors are buying the largest cryptocurrency at five figures, not selling.

According to data from monitoring resource Coin Metrics on June 2, one 10-minute period alone saw trading volume hit a giant 3,500 BTC.

“Peculiar” BTC price action sparks volume surge

As markets climbed to highs of $10,340, exchanges saw a sudden surge of interest, with Bitfinex specifically producing what Coin Metrics described as “very strange” behavior.

“#Bitcoin prices on Bitfinex just did something very strange and are now trading at a $40 premium to the rest of the market,” the company tweeted. 

This peculiar price action was accompanied by over 3,500 $BTC volume in the 10 minute candle pic.twitter.com/dPTMnHDjN0

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) June 2, 2020

The volume figure came from readings of six major exchanges: Bitfinex, Bitstamp, ItBit, Gemini, Kraken and Coinbase, the latter suffering an outage due to demand. 

BTC/USD chart showing volume spike. Source: Coin Metrics/ Twitter

Multimillion-dollar Bitcoin buys above $10,000

In response to this, Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino described the premium on his platform as “interesting.”

“We’ve seen some big buys on Finex since the spike,” he wrote. 

Ardoino further pointed to a volume spike peculiar to Bitfinex, noting that buy orders were still piling up above $10,000. Those orders included two for over $1.4 million each at $10,145 and $10,170 respectively.

“Especially the second green candle is only on us (some users entered hard in the market...) Spreads super tight,” he added.

As Cointelegraph reported, exchange reserves were lingering at their lowest levels since December 2018 as users appeared to want to hold coins, not trade or sell them.

Bitcoin exchange reserves 1-year chart. Source: CryptoQuant

According to the latest data from CryptoQuant analyzing exchange holdings, Bitcoin’s push above $10,000 has yet to attract a sizable return to exchange balances.

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Bitcoin
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