(Kitco News) The crypto market is holding up this week’s impressive gains despite news that $600 million was stolen in one of the biggest crypto heists yet. Analysts point to whale activity in the crypto space as the reason for the bullish move.
Cryptowhales are entities or individuals who hold very large amounts of a particular coin. There is no specific threshold for being a whale, but some have used 1,000 BTC as a token.
The crypto space should have been rocked by the news that hackers were able to steal around $600 million worth of crypto from a blockchain project linked to popular online game Axie Infinity.
Blockchain project Ronin reported Tuesday that hackers got away with 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD coin tokens on March 23. This makes it one of the largest crypto attacks to date. “The attacker used hacked private keys to spoof fake payouts,” Ronin Network said in a blog post.
Yet crypto security concerns have had a minimal impact on prices, especially after this week’s impressive rally.
Bitcoin is up more than 11% over the past seven days and Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, is up more than 14%. Other coins including Solana, Cardano and Terra are up 37%, 23% and 17% respectively.
For Bitcoin, this rally meant erasing all of its year-to-date losses. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $47,226.85 and Ethereum at $3,393.16, holding all of their weekly gains. The total crypto market cap was also well above $2 trillion.
A key driver behind the move was influential whale activity. One of the recent headlines was Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy issuing a $205 million loan to buy more Bitcoin. The loan comes from Silvergate Bank and is secured by Bitcoin.
MacroStrategy, a subsidiary of @MicroStrategyhas closed a $205 million bitcoin-backed loan for purchase with Silvergate Bank #Bitcoin. $MSTR $SIhttps://t.co/QYw2ZgeE3U
-Michael Saylor?? (@sailor) March 29, 2022
“The SEN Leverage Loan gives us an opportunity to expand our position as a leading public company Bitcoin investor,” said Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy. “Using the capital from the loan, we have effectively converted our bitcoins into productive collateral that will allow us to continue executing our business strategy.”
MicroStrategy now owns around 125,000 Bitcoin tokens.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg also reported a significant bitcoin purchase by the Luna Foundation Guard, which planned to back its token with more than $10 billion in bitcoin reserves.
$UST with over 10 billion USD $BTC Reserves will open a new monetary era of the Bitcoin standard.
P2P e-money that is easier to spend and more attractive to hold #btc
— Do Kwon ?? (@stablekwon) March 14, 2022
“Bitcoin remains above $47,000 showing great strength amid news of the hack,” said GlobalBlock analyst Marcus Sotiriou. “One factor in this could be positive news from MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor of receiving a $205 million loan from Silvergate Bank, collateralized by Bitcoin, to buy more Bitcoin. Buying pressure on MicroStrategy and Luna Foundation Guard is understandable, contributing to a strong short-term uptrend.”
The renewed interest in Bitcoin is also confirmed by the Coinshares report, which cites the biggest inflows into crypto funds since December. “Following two consecutive weeks of outflows, there were $193 million in inflows last week, with $147 million for European funds and $45 million for American funds,” Sotiriou noted.
Bitcoin is emerging as the world’s digital security, and prices are likely to surpass $60,000, Bloomberg Intelligence said on Wednesday.
“Bitcoin’s bearish supply schedule is unprecedented compared to most assets subject to supply elasticity. By code, there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins and about 90% have already been mined,” said Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Short holders looking to cover or open long positions expecting $30k may be disappointed and the $60k resistance appears less durable than November.”
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