The weekend had already produced major upside for the pair, which late last week dived to $16,300. By the start of Monday, $18,600 had appeared, with Bitcoin going on to deliver returns of at least 17% versus those lows.
As Cointelegraph reported, a giant $1,300 CME futures gap threatens to take the market lower, but buyers so far remain unfazed. At press time, highs above $19,200 were in progress with around half an hour to go before the start of trading on Wall Street.
BTC/USD 1-day hourly chart. Source: TradingView
"Leveling up. The crucial area around $17,800 held," Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe summarized just prior to the $19,000 move.
"Now the crucial area is $18,200 and the final breaker before ATH is the resistance around $18,600-18,900."
Should Bitcoin manage to flip that zone to support, the door remains open for another attempt at challenging $20,000. Last week, however, $19,500 provided firm resistance.
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Ian Rogers, newly appointed as a chief experience officer at Ledger, says digital assets are moving from “science fiction” to the mainstream.
The revolving door between traditional finance and the crypto space is well established. Now, executives from the luxury goods sector appear to be following in their steps.
Ian Rogers, formerly the chief digital officer at LMVH, is taking on a new role as “chief experience officer” at Ledger, the well-known French crypto hardware and software maker. LMVH was formed in 1987 from the merger of high fashion house Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy, which itself formed from a merger of champagne maker Moët & Chandon and cognac producer Hennessey, back in 1971.
The newly-created role of chief experience officer involves taking charge of business-to-consumer operations and “reinventing the user experience” of Ledger's products.
In an official statement Rogers gave an insight into how he plans to approach this new role:
“I remember when you couldn’t simply say ‘go to my website' [...] You had to first explain the concept of the internet [...] I love those moments when technology moves from science fiction to mainstream. Digital assets are standing on the verge of this move."
Rogers further referred to the “inevitable transformation” from marginal, geek technology to mass product, and to the cryptocurrency "revolution" when speaking of Ledger and the nascent digital assets industry.
At LMVH, where he worked from 2015 onwards, Rogers's work involved overhauling the e-commerce strategy at luxury brands and implementing new technologies, such as big data and AI, to help with this goal. Prior to his time at LMVH, he worked at Apple Music, Yahoo Music and Beats music, having begun his career as a website developer for the American band The Beastie Boys.
Cryptocurrencies have often been described as a finance “counterculture,” both in academic papers and the mainstream press, due to their origins in libertarian and cypherpunk movements. Now that their appeal has broadened, and their relationship to mainstream finance has become ever more intertwined, Ledger's move to onboard luxury brand executives is, perhaps, not as surprising as it would have been in the industry's earlier, more offbeat days.
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The token is being claimed as the first blockchain-based financial instrument in Switzerland to hold an International Securities Identification Number.
Gold outflows are rising as Bitcoin rallies due to heightened buyer demand from institutional investors.
The ongoing Bitcoin (BTC) rally has primarily been driven by institutions, analysts say, with metrics such as CME’s open interest and Grayscale’s assets under management (AUM), supporting this narrative.
At the same time, the gold market has seen large outflows in recent weeks. On Nov. 24, independent financial researcher Jan Nieuwenhuijs reported that gold saw its largest weekly outflow in history.
The timing of the heightened level of outflows from the gold market is noteworthy because it comes after the entrance of major institutional investors into the Bitcoin market.
Cointelegraph reported that Guggenheim Partners, which manages $275 billion in assets, is the latest institution to show interest in Bitcoin.
What does this mean for Bitcoin?
In the medium to long term, the inflow of institutional capital into Bitcoin could lead to two key trends.
First, Bitcoin could see a more sustained uptrend that has emerged since September. Institutions, especially those gaining exposure to BTC through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, are likely accumulating BTC with a long-term strategy.
Some long-time Bitcoin investors, who had gold positions for prolonged periods, have also started to allocate their capital fully into BTC. Raoul Pal, the CEO of Real Vision Group, said:
“Ok, last bomb - I have a sell order in tomorrow to sell all my gold and to scale in to buy BTC and ETH (80/20). I dont own anything else (except some bond calls and some $'s). 98% of my liquid net worth. See, you can't categorize me except #irresponsiblylong Good night all.”
Second, fund managers say that this could make Bitcoin even more dominant in the cryptocurrency market. Currently, the market cap of Bitcoin accounts for 63.83% of the global cryptocurrency market’s valuation.
Bitcoin dominance index. Source: Coinmarketcap
Kyle Davies, the co-founder at Three Arrows Capital, one of the largest funds in the cryptocurrency sector, said:
“No one goes gold -> $BTC -> alts This year has seen big high net worth inflows from USD or gold to BTC. This is not retail. These guys aren't going into ripples.”
The near-term trend of BTC remains uncertain
Bitcoin has seen strong momentum throughout the past three months, barely seeing major corrections.
During previous bull cycles, it's not uncommon for BTC to see 30% pullbacks, and the recent run is yet to post a major downturn. But, in the near term, on-chain analysts say that BTC could be braced for a deeper drop.
Bitcoin All Exchanges Outflow Mean. Source: CryptoQuant
Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, said that whales are keeping more BTC on exchanges than in the past few months. This could indicate that whales could sell more BTC in the foreseeable future. He said:
“The fact that whales don't withdraw means that $BTC is available for selling. If whales think the price will go up, they'll withdraw $BTC a lot. I don't know when it'll start, but if the price drops, whales will react to the price and make high volatility.”
Whether the buyer demand from institutions and their Time-weighted Average Price (TWAP) algorithms would counter the selling pressure from whales would likely dictate the short-term price cycle of BTC.
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