Throughout May 2019, Bitcoin saw an exuberant run-up in price, reminiscent to parts of 2017. Interestingly, since the beginning of May, weekends have hosted a large amount of bullish action for crypto’s largest asset.
Cryptocurrency markets run 24/7. Since the introduction of Bitcoin futures trading, however, weekends have often posted less activity than weekdays, according to a 2018 Crypto Street podcast interview with trading expert Nicola Duke. Speaking on parallels between traditional markets and the crypto space, Duke noted she saw a difference in the crypto markets once Bitcoin futures saw introduction.
Bitcoin sustained a sizeable drop in price on the weekend of November 24 and 25 of 2018. Referencing Saturday, November 24, Duke said, “We’d call that, in FX, a drive-by shooting, because in legacy markets, there are certain really quiet times of day when people have stopped trading in Europe and gone home, it’s the end of the day in the U.S., but the Asian markets haven’t woken up yet.”
“So it’s really thin liquidity,” she said, pertaining to specific markets. “If you wanted to move the market, and spend the least amount of money to move the market, that is the kind of time of day you would do it,” She added.
Duke compared this scenario to the mentioned weekend in November in fall 2018. “That feels like what happened on Saturday night, like why did it drop at that time on a Saturday,” she said. “Pretty much since [Bitcoin] futures have started, weekends have been really quiet,” she added. “Somebody wanted to break that support, and smashed it.”
May was a hot month for Bitcoin’s price as the asset surged above several vital levels. Looking at the charts, it seems as though weekends have been important times for the asset’s price to break upward.
The last three weekends in May hosted dramatic moves upward for Bitcoin. According to Duke’s comments, it might be possible that someone wanted to move the market notably upward, choosing those weekend hours to break upward resistance.
On Saturday, May 11, price powered through several formidable resistance levels, traveling from the $6,300 area, all the way up past $7,400. Many in the crypto space thought the $6,000 – $7,000 price zone would be tough to break through based on the lengthy periods of time price hovered through that level as support in 2018.
The last two weekends in May also saw similar upward movement for Bitcoin. The first two weekends in June, however, have not yielded the same price action. Bitcoin hosted comparably less action than the mentioned May weekends. Time will tell if the remaining weekends in June will provide further bullish advances.
