Ki Young Ju, CEO of blockchain analytics startup CryptoQuant, has revealed he has “no doubt” the price of bitcoin will hit $100,000 this year, but added that in the short-term he has a bearish stance over the lack of significant buying pressure.
The CEO’s words were based on data from Coinbase Pro, which shows that the exchange isn’t seeing sufficient buying pressure to keep the price of the flagship cryptocurrency going up. At press time, BTC is trading at $34,270 after falling more than 8% in the last 24 hours, according to CryptoCompare data.
Ki Young Ju tracks data on the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as its outflows have seemingly shown the presence of institutional investors buying up BTC. Earlier this month, $1.7 billion outflows from the exchange suggested institutions were buying bitcoin above $30,000.
He is, as such, also tracking outflows from Coinbase as well as a premium that has been seen on the exchange. Sufficient buying pressure, he said, has been enough to create a $100 gap between the BTCUSD pair on Coinbase and the BTCUSDT pair on Binance. He speculated the pressure may come from high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors.
If the premium on Coinbase drops or disappears, that means institutional investors and other large players are no longer heavily accumulating BTC, and as such buying pressure has dropped significantly. Similarly, outflows show whether large institutional investors are making over-the-counter (OTC) deals for BTC.
The crypto CEO is well-known for being bullish on bitcoin, and has in the past used various metrics to predict this year’s bull run. CryptoQuant has pointed out that total BTC inflows into all wallets owned by crypto exchanges tends to decrease when the price of Bitcoin is going up and vice versa.
Analysts at JPMorgan have also recently warned that the $40,000 mark is critical for the cryptocurrency, as failing to stay above could mean a bearish trend in the short-term. Despite the ongoing correction, most seemingly agree that BTC’s price will increase throughout the year.
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