On January 29, American entrepreneur Elon Musk published a message on Twitter with the text "it was inevitable" regarding bitcoin, which attracted the attention of the whole world to the cryptocurrency.
As a result of the publication of the tweet, the rate of the first cryptocurrency jumped from $32,000 to $37,000 in just a few minutes and the cryptocurrency exchange Binance saw a record influx of new users. Because of this, the site even suspended the withdrawal of funds for a short period of time.
Note that the message of Ilon Musk was not the only catalyst for the growth of the first cryptocurrency - January 29 was also the expiration date of options on bitcoin worth $3.2 billion.
"Right after the expiration, bitcoin was up $5,000. The reason was either the expiration itself or Musk's tweet," said Luuk Strijers, chief operating officer of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit.
According to cryptocurrency broker FalconX, it was retail investors who caused the rise in bitcoin prices. For example, during the rise in the rate, bitcoin trading volumes from hedge funds dropped 45%, but retail investors increased trading immediately by 1 100%.
"I think there's a correlation with the Wall Street Bets community on the Reddit forum. Especially since the volumes were traded by US users," said FalconX's head of institutional investor relations, Aya Kantorovich.
Recall that this week, Reddit forum users "inflated" the GameStop share price for institutional traders to take losses. Against this background, interest in the cryptocurrency industry has also increased.