Bitcoin hits $64,000, retail investors are "sleeping", while institutions are celebrating

Bitpush terminal data showed that Bitcoin soared rapidly early Wednesday, breaking through the $60,000 mark for the first time since November 2021, and then hit a high of $64,037 within hours, suddenly diving 7% to a low of $59,400. Mainstream tokens such as Solana 's SOL, Chainlink 's LINK and Avalanche 's AVAX also fell by nearly 3%-5% in the past hour.

CoinGlass data shows that the violent market fluctuations have caused more than $600 million in liquidation of the entire crypto network. In the past 24 hours, 178,095 traders have been liquidated, with a total amount of $693.29 million.

Analysts pointed out that retail investors had low participation in this round of gains.

The excessive traffic caused Coinbase 's application to crash, and some users said their account balances were displayed as zero. The company's CEO, Brian Armstrong, explained on social media: "We modeled and load-tested a traffic surge of about 10 times, but it actually exceeded that number."

Even with the pullback, Bitcoin is still up more than 7% this week and 44% this month, with analysts attributing the growth to a number of favorable factors: increased demand for Bitcoin ETFs, expectations surrounding the next Bitcoin halving cycle, and favorable macroeconomic conditions.

US spot Bitcoin ETF trading continues in full swing.

According to Bloomberg data, as of the close of U.S. stocks on Wednesday, the trading volume of spot Bitcoin ETFs reached US$7.6 billion, breaking the historical record of US$4.7 billion since the first trading day on January 11.

BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) had a trading volume of approximately $3.3 billion. Fidelity FBTC had a trading volume of approximately $1.4 billion. Grayscale GBTC had a trading volume of $1.8 billion.

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said IBIT “traded more today than it did in the previous two weeks combined. This is officially a craze.”

Jim Bianco, president and macro strategist at Bianco Research , said the number of unique transactions for BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF exceeded that of the top S&P 500 ETF SPY and the QQQ , which tracks the Nasdaq.

Data from BitMEX Research shows that since their launch in January, 10 newly listed spot ETFs have attracted more than $6.7 billion in net inflows. This week, spot ETFs have accelerated their accumulation, exceeding $1 billion in two days, with BlackRock's IBIT alone attracting $520 million in new funds on Tuesday.

Retail investors are “sleeping” while institutions are partying?

IntoTheBlock analysts said that on-chain data and web searches showed that retail investors had low participation during Bitcoin's rise to over $60,000.

Web searches and app downloads for Bitcoin on Google are moderate. Notably, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s app rose to number one in Apple’s U.S. App Store downloads in late October 2021, coinciding with the height of the bull market enthusiasm.

Transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain has been increasing, but is well below levels seen during the market’s peak in 2021, the analysts added.

Likewise, the number of new Bitcoin addresses has been steady and has cooled from a peak late last year, likely due to the craze for Ordinals, a protocol that allows users to store non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Bitcoin, which surged in popularity last year, clogging the network and driving up transaction fees.

IntoTheBlock analysts said in a post on Wednesday: "Despite the incredible price action of Bitcoin , current data shows that retail investors are calm, which suggests that institutional investors may dominate this phase. ETFs are seen as potential accumulation tools."

“The rally appears to be driven primarily by the BTC ETF,” said Stephane Ouellette, CEO of FRNT Financial, an institutional platform focused on digital assets. “Some estimates suggest that less than 20% of investment advisors have received approval from their firms to include their clients in the product, a process that could take as little as a year.”

Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley is considering adding a spot Bitcoin ETF to its brokerage platform, CoinDesk reported today, citing people familiar with the matter.