On Wednesday, April 29th, a significant influx of buying interest pushed bitcoin’s value close to $9,000, causing a flurry of activity across leading crypto exchanges.
At the time of writing, BTC The value hovered between $8,800 and $8,900, marking an intraday rise of around 15%. This bullish momentum follows closely with the anticipated Bitcoin block reward halving set to occur in less than two weeks.
This resurgence comes on the heels of bitcoin’s sharp decline below $5,000 during the market chaos on March 12th’s 'Black Thursday'. The sentiment around crypto markets has shifted to a more optimistic tone since then, with prominent industry entities now Binance and Coinbase facing a significant surge in demand.
Binance Achieves Record-Breaking Daily Volume
Binance didn’t earn its reputation as a 'giant' without substantial strides in operations and achievements. The exchange's exceptional spike in trading volume on April 29th is no trivial achievement.
During the midst of the day’s crypto market upswing, Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, tweeted about the platform hitting over $11 billion in total daily trading volume, setting a new all-time record.
ATH in trading volume on @Binance , $11 billion in 24 hrs. https://t.co/lx27tfP8Db
— CZ ???? Binance (@cz_binance) April 29, 2020
Shortly after Zhao's announcement, Binance's trading volume scaled past $12 billion, marking another milestone. The CEO remarked that the last time Binance experienced such trading activity was in January 2018, during the cryptoeconomy’s previous peak.
\"We've witnessed all-time highs in trader numbers for some time, but today's volume sets a new record,\" Zhao commented. said .
Coinbase Faces Outages
Coinbase, the leading U.S. crypto exchange based in San Francisco, often experiences massive user surges, which can result in service outages on high trading days, and April 29th followed this trend.
Coinbase app is crashing. 2017 vibes pic.twitter.com/SJ4jGFJ5Ua
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) April 29, 2020
Indeed, on Wednesday, as U.S. traders rushed to invest in top cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether, both the Coinbase website and Coinbase Pro websites faced temporary disruptions, as did their mobile applications. The exchanges quickly addressed these issues, stating:
\"We continue to monitor and will conduct a thorough review to ensure complete resolution of the issue's root cause. This problem only affected access to Coinbase and Coinbase Pro interfaces, not trading through our APIs or the market’s overall health.\"
The temporary downtime at least highlights the trading craze that unfolded on one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. The critical question now is whether this buying pressure was a one-time spike or a prelude to a prolonged bullish trend.
Bitcoin Overshadows Major Stock Indices
Since Black Thursday, there has been much talk comparing bitcoin’s performance to that of the S&P 500, one of Wall Street's premier indices.
For instance, last month, brief trading conditions saw bitcoin closely align newfound levels of correlation with the S&P 500’s movements. This suggested traders were treating equities and crypto similarly as risk-on assets.
While this isn’t particularly startling, it is noteworthy that bitcoin has outperformed the S&P 500 since February 20th, marking the last high for the U.S. stock market. The primary index has dipped by about -14% since, whereas bitcoin has fallen roughly -13.9% in the same duration.
For some, the notion of bitcoin being a better value store than the S&P 500 during global economic upheaval, even briefly, is hard to believe. Yet, this is our reality. We’re in unprecedented times, allowing the previously unimaginable to unfold.
