UPDATED 22:26 EDT / FEBRUARY 19 2018

EMERGING TECH

Bull run continues as a single investor snaps up $344M in bitcoin

Bitcoin’s bull run continued today as its price traded above $11,000 for the first time since Jan. 28.

One reason: An anonymous investor is reported to have purchased approximately 41,000 bitcoin valued at $344 million. That’s seen by many as a sign that serious money is flooding back into the market.

The so-called “bitcoin whale” made the bitcoin purchases in various tranches at an average of $8,400 from Feb. 9 through Feb. 12. The purchase is now worth $468 million as of today — a very nice return for a less than two-week-old investment. “Not sure who that big buyer was, but many have bought this dip and have added since the rebound and additional regulatory clarity in the U.S. and Asia,” Alex Sunnarborg, founding partner of Tetras Capital, told Marketwatch.

Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a public distributed blockchain ledger, making all transactions publicly viewable, with the unknown trader making the purchases through the bitcoin wallet address 3Cbq7aT1tY8kMxWLbitaG7yT6bPbKChq64. The wallet also shows that the trader now has a total bitcoin balance of 96,650.85649467 bitcoin as of 10 p.m. EST, worth $1.09 billion.

The news of the massive purchase added momentum to a bull run in bitcoin that started when bitcoin bottomed out at $6,363.97 on Feb. 5. Bitcoin broke through $10,000 during Chinese New Year Thursday as market confidence was driven by news relating to cryptocurrencies shifting into positive territory. Positive stories included growing moves by governments to regulate cryptocurrencies instead of banning them.

“The market for cryptocurrencies has been on a rollercoaster over the last few weeks,” Daniele Bianchi, assistant professor of finance at the Warwick Business School, told SiliconANGLE. “This is true for both bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin, which are rapidly recovering some of the losses experienced over the last month.”

Bianchi added that “most of the upward trend is thanks to demand pressure following the apparent softening of the regulatory stance in the European Union, as mainly confirmed by the ECB president Mario Draghi, and the increasingly positive attitude of major investment players such as JP Morgan.”

Bitcoin was trading at $11,374.34 as of 10:15 p.m. EST, up from $10,536.67 24 hours earlier. The growing confidence in bitcoin was slightly contagious across other leading cryptocurrencies, with Ethereum trading at $947.56, up from $932 the day before. Litecoin was up $5, to $222.67, while Ripple XRP remained flat at $1.14.

Disclosure: The author is currently #HODL on a small amount of Ripple XRP. 

Image: Pexels

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