Bitcoin (BTC) price gained over $300 in just ten minutes on July 27 as markets rallied to take the largest cryptocurrency back above $10,000.
Market visualization. Source: Coin360
Bitcoin network holds clues to price future
Data from Coin360 shows BTC/USD trending towards the psychologically important barrier after hitting local highs of $10,179 early Saturday.
The sudden uptick ended a period of losses for Bitcoin holders, who watched as the pair descended to lows around $9,580 this week.
Bitcoin 7-day price chart. Courtesy of Coin360
Bitcoin price remains around 4.7% down versus the start of last weekend, something which at least one major analyst now thinks could flip to the upside.
Writing on Twitter, Tom Lee, senior market analyst at Fundstrat Global Advisors, highlighted next week’s presumed interest rate cut in the United States as a motivating factor for sending BTC higher.
Previous weekends have sparked bearish runs, he noted, but this Federal Reserve move should deliver the opposite effect.
“So expect Bitcoin to break the pattern this weekend and actually rise this weekend,” he summarized.
Others were more conservative. Regular market commentator Josh Rager said he was of neutral sentiment as long as Bitcoin traded between $9,690 and $10,586, with bullish or bearish signs only occurring outside that corridor.
“If you wanted to see a potential scenario for a lower-high & lower-low it would likely top somewhere near the weekly resistance,” he wrote in a Friday social media update.
Meanwhile, the Twitter account known as PlanB highlighted data demonstrating that Bitcoin price bull runs increasingly correlate with lows in mining difficulty.
As Cointelegraph reported, difficulty — the amount of effort required for miners to validate blocks of transactions — hit new highs this month, but Bitcoin’s 2019 price expansion started at a point when difficulty bottomed out.
According to PlanB, who analyzed other bullish moves, if this trend continues to play out, it would send BTC/USD to a logical high of $370,000.
That figure is in line with another prediction from hedge fund Pantera Capital, the CEO of which told mainstream media this week that Bitcoin could peak at $356,000 in 2022.
Altcoins fail to inspire
Markets nonetheless remained a lot less complimentary when it comes to altcoins, which were yet to deliver decisive moves as the weekend began.
Despite Bitcoin’s gains, tokens appeared only to shed value, with some minor exceptions, while failing to capitalize on renewed investor interest.
At press time, largest altcoin Ether (ETH) had advanced modestly by around 1.9% to hit $221.
Ether 7-day price chart. Courtesy of Coin360
One to two percent gains characterized the top twenty cryptocurrencies by market cap Saturday. The total cryptocurrency market cap stood at $278 billion – around $7 billion higher than a day previously.
Bitcoin’s overall share of that figure also slightly increased – by 0.3% to total 64.7%.