Analyst Says XRP Price Will Outperform Bitcoin And Ethereum, Reveals ‘Secret Under The Hood’

Bitcoin reserves held on leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance have dwindled to levels that hadn’t been seen since January of this year, raising prospects of a potential 90% BTC price rise as witnessed earlier this year, when reserves dropped to these levels.

According to analysis published by CryptoQuant contributor Darkfrost, Binance’s bitcoin reserves have fallen to 570,000 BTC in a drawdown that resembles one seen earlier this year, before the price of the flagship cryptocurrency surged to near $70,000 in March.

The firm’s data shows that as reserves on Binance dropped to around 564,000 BTC earlier this month, the price of the flagship cryptocurrency rose to surpass the $100,000 mark for the first time ever, before reserves started moving up slightly and BTC’s price dipped.

Per Darkfrost, the lower reserves on Binance suggest “that investors are confident in bitcoin’s long-term prospects, opting to withdraw their holdings from the exchange rather than keeping them there for selling on the short term.”

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As CryptoGlobe reported, the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this year have registered more than $1.5 billion in outflows over the last four days, with data showing these funds’ largest-ever outflow occurred on Dec. 19 as $671.9 million were moved out.

According to data from Farside Investors, spot bitcoin ETFs’ largest-ever daily outflow put an end to a 15-day inflow streak and came amid a significant cryptocurrency market sell-off, which saw the price of BTC drop from over $100,000 to a low below the $93,000 mark before recovering.

The massive exodus surpassed previous record outflows recorded back in May when the price of bitcoin dropped by more than 10% over a week. Since then, these funds have suffered significant outflows of $277 million on Dec. 20, $226.5 million on Dec. 23, and $338.4 million on Dec. 24.

The outflows come at a time when Nasdaq-listed business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has announced the acquisition of an additional 5,262 bitcoin at an average price of $106,662 per BTC, with the purchase costing the firm around $561 million in total.

The Nasdaq-listed business intelligence firm’s total BTC holdings surpassed 400,000 BTC earlier this month after it invested $1.5 billion into the flagship cryptocurrency. The company’s BTC accumulation strategy has inspired other companies to follow suit.

Featured image via Unsplash.

"I’ve had a lot of very memorable days on the internet over the past 30 years, but this one tops them all," wrote Siqi Chen, CEO and CFO of startup finance platform Runway, in an X post on Thursday.

On Tuesday night, Chen posted a heartfelt plea on X, asking for donations to support the Hankinson Lab at the University of Colorado. The lab in the only one in North America to research children's craniopharyngiomas, a rare type of brain tumor that affects Chen's young daughter, Mira. Following signal boosts from prominent X users, including X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Chen's GoFundMe raised over $230,000 as of the time of writing.

However, it was a charity memecoin named MIRA created by an apparent Pump.Fun beginner that stunned Chen, who posted shocked updates as the coin rocketed to an all-time high market capitalization of $80 million. Thanks to X user Waddles, who purchased and then sent Chen 50% of the memecoin soon after launch, Chen's stake in the project was suddenly worth millions.

"When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be good to buy and send supply to you with the hopes of getting the SOL community behind a good cause on Christmas," Waddles wrote on X. "I'm really glad that it worked out the way that it has and I hope that the money helps to find a cure both for Mira and anyone else with her condition."

After liquidating some of his supply, Chen posted an update on Thursday describing his plan to manage the funds moving forward.

"Starting in about 12 hours [roughly 3 AM on December 27, UTC], I will be liquidating $1,000 worth of $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. No more and no less than that," wrote Chen on X. "If i change this schedule, I commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance."

Chen acknowledged that some traders may have profited off of the coin with no intent to distribute the funds to charity but described the overall situation as a net positive.

"At the end of the day we set out to raise $200K and we will end up with at least $1M towards rare disease research," Chen wrote. "No matter what, this has been a win for the world."

MIRA fell in value following the announcement, settling at a market capitalization of around $20 million at the time of writing. A related memecoin with the ticker "kitkat," named after Mira's dog, also briefly eclipsed a $3 million market cap before declining to a market cap of about $150,000.

"100% of every penny we've made from this, across every kitkat/memecoin, including LP fees will be going directly to rare disease research (minus any tax obligations)," Chen wrote.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had previously identified charity coins as a "positive-sum" spin on the memecoin craze, though he called previous efforts "far from perfect."

"It feels like there is an unclaimed opportunity here to try to create something more positive-sum and long-lasting," Buterin wrote in his blog post.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

There’s one project that refuses to let up.

Base's transaction count has maintained momentum through the fourth quarter. It consistently processes over 8 million daily transactions and distinguishes itself among optimistic rollups.

Since March, the network has demonstrated steady growth, with transaction volume increasing from approximately 500,000 to over 7.5 million daily transactions by December. This growth trajectory contrasts with other optimistic rollups, which have shown more modest transaction patterns during the same period.

The platform's ecosystem has shown particular strength through the Virtuals protocol, the AI agent platform. Virtuals-related tokens have accumulated a combined market capitalization of $3 billion, establishing Base as a significant hub for new token launches of this kind.

Recent activity also includes MegaETH’s mega raise on Echo, which secured $10 million in just three minutes, making it the largest raise on the platform.

Base's core development team is also looking to scale Base as they announced plans to implement Reth for scaling solutions. Current scaling challenges include growing storage requirements of approximately 500GB per week for archive nodes and extended node provisioning times of up to 15 hours. The transition to Reth aims to address these scaling concerns while maintaining the network's commitment to operational transparency and community involvement.

The network's total value locked has grown to exceed $3.5 billion, reflecting sustained ecosystem development and user confidence despite broader market volatility.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry's most thought-provoking trends.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Here’s what the historical trend of the Bitcoin Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) Ratio suggests regarding whether the current bull run is over or not.

Bitcoin MVRV Ratio Could Hint At Where BTC Is In Current Cycle

In a new post on X, CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju shared a chart showcasing the past pattern in the Bitcoin MVRV Ratio. The MVRV Ratio refers to a popular on-chain metric that, in short, keeps track of how the value held by the BTC investors (that is, the market cap) compares against the value that they initially put into the asset (the realized cap).

When the value of the ratio is greater than 1, it means the investors as a whole can be assumed to be in a state of profit. On the other hand, it is under the mark, implying the dominance of loss in the market.

The version of the MVRV Ratio posted by Young Ju isn’t the ordinary one, but rather a modified form called the “True MVRV.” This variation takes into account for only the data of the coins that were involved in some kind of transaction activity during the past seven years.

Coins that are older than seven years can be assumed to be lost forever, either due to being forgotten or because of having their wallet keys misplaced. As such, the True MVRV, which excludes these coins that are probable to never return back into circulation, can provide a more accurate picture of the sector than the normal version of the metric.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in this Bitcoin indicator over the history of the cryptocurrency:

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin True MVRV has climbed to relatively high levels during this bull run. This implies the average investor is carrying notable profits.

Historically, the higher the holder gains get, the more likely they become to participate in a mass selloff with the motive of profit-taking. Thus, whenever the MVRV Ratio rises high, a top can become probable for BTC.

From the chart, it’s visible that the tops during the past cycles occurred when the indicator surpassed a specific line. So far, the metric hasn’t come close to retesting this level in the latest epoch.

According to the CryptoQuant founder, the reason the market cap hasn’t overheated relative to the realized cap yet is that there is still $7 billion in capital inflows entering the Bitcoin market every week.

If the current cycle is going to show anything similar to the previous ones, then the True MVRV being high, but not extremely high, could potentially suggest room for BTC left in the current bull run.

BTC Price

Bitcoin has retraced its Christmas rally as its value is now back down to $95,700.

Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies at Bitwise Invest, has predicted that the price of Bitcoin might potentially hit $1 million if the US creates a Bitcoin reserve.

"That’s the only math in which Bitcoin can hit $1mm+ in 2025 when it happens," Park said in a recent tweet.

However, he sees only a relatively small 10% of a federal Bitcoin reserve happening next year.

Earlier this year, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Lummis introduced a draft bill that would require the U.S. Treasury to acquire 1 billion Bitcoins over the course of five years.

The idea has attracted a lot of attention in recent months, with various pundits debating its viability.

Meanwhile, Polymarket buyers see a 31% chance of a Bitcoin reserve happening in 2025.

As reported by U.Today, the idea of creating a Bitcoin reserve is also gaining traction around the world. However, the Japanese government recently expressed skepticism regarding investing some of its foreign currency reserves in Bitcoin.

Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz is also not convinced that a Bitcoin reserve is going to happen in the near future. However, if the US government does make such an audacious move toward mainstream cryptocurrency adoption, he expects the price of Bitcoin to surge to as high as $500,000 since other countries would likely follow suit.

Meanwhile, Fundstrat's Tom Lee believes that the price of Bitcoin could hit $250,000. However, the analyst is also convinced that it could surge much higher if the reserve gets implemented.

The trend of corporates putting bitcoin on their balance sheet could grow into 2025, according to an analyst at market-making firm Wintermute.

“I think that is now going to be quite a big driver next year when you get the corporates coming in on top of the institutions, and their own institutional base of listed companies that are trying to get exposure,” Wintermute OTC trader Jake Ostrovskis told The Block. "You're likely to see the SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] come in as well."

In recent years, MicroStrategy has bought $10 billion worth of bitcoin and plans to buy $42 billion more — leveraging its equity to do so.

Ostrovskis pointed to bitcoin mining companies Mara and Riot as examples of those following in the footsteps of MicroStrategy, issuing convertible notes to buy more bitcoin. And earlier this week, Metaplanet announced plans to raise $31.8 million in bond issuance to accelerate bitcoin purchases.

The core idea behind these moves is that they can boost a company's balance sheet while raising its stock price. Call it the MicroStrategy strategy.

“People at the moment are talking about the impact of ETFs and the real driver of that is that you can now have like pension funds and sovereign wealth funds putting cash in,” he said. “But actually there's this whole other pool of capital in corporates, which is arguably a little bit freer and probably faster moving than waiting for pension funds to come and buy Bitcoin ETFs.”

Ostrovskis said traditional hedge funds, which had been waiting for ETFs to provide access to crypto, are moving quickly because they see an opportunity in the market.

“Now people are leaning into crypto not as natives but as traditional institutions who are just applying the old strategies they used to trade in equities to crypto," he said. "You can see a lot of that like turn up in the flows that we're seeing.”

Ostrovskis predicts that some companies will follow the MicroStrategy playbook but with ether instead.

“It's probably only a matter of time until someone does the equivalent and turns themselves into like an Ethereum investment vehicle," he said. "At that point, you turn into the MicroStrategy of that world.”

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.