UPDATED 17:03 EDT / SEPTEMBER 19 2014

Is the Alibaba IPO why Bitcoin’s market price is dropping?

alibaba-bitcoinToday Alibaba Group Holding Limited went public with an IPO in the United States priced at $68, raising $21.8 billion for the company and investors. According to The Wall Street Journal, this makes Alibaba the biggest U.S. IPO in history.

How is Alibaba related to Bitcoin? As a holding group, the Alibaba Group represents a massive holding of e-commerce across all of China and BTC China is one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges by volume, which recently saw a jump in volume to 29,400 BTC from a daily average of 19,000 BTC. European exchanges also saw an increase in volume, for example BitStamp saw a 100% jump.

According to Ian Worrall of Sembro Development LLC posting at Bitcoin Magazine, this is most likely correlates with the recent sudden drop in Bitcoin’s market index value. Thursday, September 18, the price of Bitcoin had fallen by 9.39% ($42.70) since an overall week of falling values that Worrall’s analysis argues is due to the IPO of Alibaba.

“Based on this information, we have concluded that many large Bitcoin investors from China and Europe have exited their positions in Bitcoin to put into the Alibaba IPO,” Worrall writes.

He concludes that the price could rebound slightly once the investors close positions in Alibaba and re-enter the market, but was careful to hedge saying that if Alibaba’s IPO remains strong that money may not flow back into the market until a later date (or at all.)

Dave Vellante, Co-CEO and Chief Analyst for SiliconANGLE Media, says that the IPO of Alibaba underscores a turning point for investors and businesses generally and the continuing era of China’s ascendancy. On Alibaba’s short term strength, Vellante adds, “The company is growing 30% sequentially which is eye popping… To me it looks like a winner and I would expect the company’s value to continue to grow.”

Vellente’s predictions combined with Worrall’s analysis suggests that Bitcoin’s market value may not see those investors jumping back out of Alibaba in the near future.

Mark Hopkins, founding editor of SiliconANGLE, has a more optimistic view of the IPO and it’s extended effect on Bitcoin.

“To me, that there’s a movement of capital from Bitcoin to an Asian IPO is indicative of the mindset that these Chinese early adopting investors have around cryptocurrency in general,” Hopkins says. Adding that this might be a way that early-adopters in China could use to recoup losses after the drop of BTC from $1,200 to the mid-$400s this month. “The type of person who would move capital between a cryptocurrency to an IPO is a person looking at short term gains, not long term store of value.”

Hopkins argues that as a perceived peak reaches Alibaba’s stock it will send these investors either back into the Bitcoin economy or onto the “next big thing.”

So far, lots of speculation continues to ride on the Bitcoin’s falling market value, but the price—hovering around $404 USD  (BitcoinAverage.com) at publication time—has nearly reached April’s low, the lowest the price has hit since the boom in 2013.


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