Bitcoin (BTC) Rises In Price As Bulls Return To The Markets

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) rose sharply today an indication that the sentiment in the cryptocurrency markets has turned bullish. The trade volumes of the cryptocurrency have also risen with the daily volume now at over $8 billion in the last 24 hours. Some of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges which are trading the highest amounts of Bitcoin include Huobi, Upbit, Binance, Okex and Bitfinex.

At press time the volumes of Bitcoin traded on Bitfinex were more than $664 million over a 24-hour period. A week ago more than 60% of the global trade volume in Bitcoin was in Japanese yen but this has fallen for 45.4% as the share of U.S. Dollar in bitcoin global volume rose to 28.7%. Following the U.S. Dollar is Tether which is responsible for 13.7% of bitcoin’s global trade volume. The share of the euro is 4.3% while that of the South Korean won is 4.1%.

Various headwinds

Prior to this rally the prices of Bitcoin had been impacted negatively by a couple of headwinds including a decision by a trustee of Mt. Gox to dispose of cryptocurrency worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Besides Bitcoin other virtual currencies also saw gains. This included the four other leading digital currencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Though Litecoin (LTC) has for a long time enjoyed the top-5 spot it has now been pushed out by EOS.

Tax Day

According to analysts the rally that Bitcoin has experienced is probably a result of the fact that Tax Day in the United States is now almost here. The final day for the filing of taxes in the United States is April 17. Per this school of thought as tax day approaches it becomes necessary for people to dispose of their assets held in bitcoins in order to raise the amounts required to meet their tax obligations.

Since a lot of people have now completed the exercise the sell-off that had made the price of bitcoin fall so drastically is now no more. This theory is reinforced by the fact that the digital currency suddenly fell at the beginning of the week when it lost 6% in a matter of two hours and breaking its $7,000 support.

“The selling pressure associated with tax day has subsided right now. As people get their tax returns, there may be new money entering the market,” said Ryan Taylor, the chief executive officer of Dash Core, a digital currency software firm, in an interview with CNN.