1. Home
  2. Will Woo

Will Woo

Bitcoin price in classic ‘Bull Pennant’ breakout as BTC whales go on buying spree

The latest BTC price jump above $65,000 has all the signs of a classic bullish breakout.

Bitcoin (BTC) has the potential to rise toward $75,000 by the end of this year as it breaks out of a classic bullish pattern and picks additional upside cues from its richest investors' recent accumulation spree.

Bitcoin Bull Pennant breakout in play

BTC rallied over by 6% in the past 24 hours to reach a three-week high just shy of $66,500. In doing so, the cryptocurrency broke out of a consolidation range consisting of two diverging trendlines, a setup reminiscent of a Bull Pennant.

Bull Pennants are bullish continuation patterns that appear when an instrument consolidates in a Triangle-like price range following a strong move higher (called Flagpole). It typically ends up breaking out of the range to the upside, eyeing a profit target at length equal to the Flagpole's size.

Bitcoin ticks almost all the boxes when it comes to confirming a Bull Pennant breakout. As a result, its likelihood of continuing its upside boom has risen, with its profit target sitting as high as the height of its Flagpole, which is over $12,300, as shown in the chart below.

BTC/USD daily price chart featuring Bull Pennant setup. Source: TradingView

The bull setup puts the BTC price on the way towards $75,000, after adding the Flagpole height to the point of breakout around $63,300.

Whales enter BTC accumulation spree

Bitcoin's bullish setup received additional confirmation from an on-chain indicator by Santiment that tracks distribution/accumulation activities of the wallets with balances between 10,000 BTC and 100,000 BTC.

The metric highlighted that the so-called "Bitcoin whales" have been accelerating their buying spree.

Specifically, these entities accumulated 43,000 BTC (worth about $2.82 billion) in the last five days and about 92,000 BTC (over $6 billion) in the last 25 days, just as the price rallied to a record high near $67,000, corrected below $60,000, and surged back above $66,000.

Bitcoin whale accumulation/distribution chart. Source: Santiment

The whale-led buying between the $60,000-67,000 area underscored their preparations for the times ahead, i.e. they anticipated Bitcoin to close beyond its previous record high.

Related: Bitcoin whale indicator detects multi-month accumulation trend as BTC eyes $67K-retest

Additionally, on-chain analyst Willy Woo noted that Bitcoin continues to move off exchanges to cold storage in recent weeks. At the same time, the deposits of dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC surged in the same period, underlining a classing buying pattern.

BTC spot exchange net flows. Source: Willy Woo

"Price was previously overheated, calling for a time of consolidation, since then we've seen significant buying from investors while [the] price has been sideways," wrote Woo in a note to clients, adding:

"It’s been a healthy consolidation. Meanwhile, significant whale activity has been spotted which suggests BTC’s next move in price may come soon."

Bitcoin is up by nearly 50% so  in Q4, just 2% under its all-time high of $67,000. 

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Blockchain adoption in healthcare faces serious obstacles in Germany

Did a massive Chinese power outage cause Bitcoin’s crash down to $50k?

On-chain analyst Willy Woo argues a massive power outage in Chinese mining hub Xinjiang drove Bitcoin’s violent crash down to $50,000.

Woo noted reports identifying the blackouts were published late last week, with the power outages occurring to facilitate safety inspections in response to a recent flooding accident at a local coal mine that saw 21 miners temporarily trapped underground after power and communications went down.

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, or BECI, Xinjiang represents nearly one-quarter of the global hash rate.

The analyst notes yesterday saw the largest daily drop in total Bitcoin network hash rate since November 2017, with hash rate plummeting from 172 million terahashes per second, or TH/s, to less roughly 154 million TH/s, according to Ycharts.

Popular crypto market analyst, Willy Woo, has attributed the violent April 18 cryptocurrency crash to a sudden drop in hash rate resulting from a power outage in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Bitcoin hash rate: Ycharts

Woo points to 9,000 BTC that was transferred to Binance on April 16, speculating the funds were likely sent by a “whale with closer knowledge to happenings in China.” 

Coupled with heavy selling in the quarterly futures markets, the downward momentum drove $4.9 billion worth of Bitcoin liquidations and a further $4.4 billion in margin calls in the altcoin markets — with a record 1 million accounts being liquidated.

However, not everyone agrees with Woo’s analysis, with Cinneanhaim Ventures partner, Adam Cochran, describing “the idea that a power outage last night in a mining region in China led to the dop in $BTC” as “utter nonsense.”

Woo noted that long-term whales who rarely sell have been buying heavily amid the dip, adding that the lower $50,000 range is forming “the largest cluster of price discovery since BTC was below $10k.”

“Validation of BTC as a trillion dollar asset is immensely strong,” he said, adding that 13.5% of the entire BTC supply has been moved on-chain while Bitcoin’s capitalization has exceeded $1 trillion.

Blockchain adoption in healthcare faces serious obstacles in Germany