Bitcoin: 1.4 billion USDC on the move, is a BTC rally next?

• Total stablecoin exchange reserves also rose steadily.
• Whales held nearly 55% of the total stablecoin supply at press time.

Bitcoin [BTC] bounced out of range bound price action this week, raking in impressive gains of 9.61%. As of this writing, the king coin was consolidating around its 2021 highs of $70k, according to CoinMarketCap.

With excitement back in the market, brace yourself for more volatility and price surges in the week ahead.

Another pump incoming?

J.A. Maartunn, a verified author at on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, flagged the largest ever USDC transfer to an exchange in history, totaling $1.4 billion. This event overshadowed the previous Bitcoin high in January 2023, during which $1.3 billion in USDCs were deposited.

Source: CryptoQuant

A significant rise in stablecoin deposits typically precedes strong surges in Bitcoin’s price, and is interpreted as a bullish signal. In fact, the aforementioned USDC transfer in January 2023 also led to a rally from the coin’s cyclical low of $16,800.

Traditional investors use stablecoins as a medium to enter the cryptocurrency market, using them to buy other volatile and high return coins. Moreover, latest transfer was done on Coinbase – a hot favorite among U.S. institutional investors for buying Bitcoins.

Whales increase stablecoin holdings

AMBCrypto investigated further and spotted a sharp increase in overall stablecoin exchange reserves in recent weeks. As per CryptoQuant, more than 20 billion stablcoins were held in exchange wallets at press time, highest since March 2o23.

The buying pressure was also seen in the steadily increasing stablecoin holdings of whale investors.

As per AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment’s data, wallets worth more than $5 million held nearly 55% of the total stablecoin supply at press time, up from 51.88% on the 20th of March.

Source: Santiment

Read BTC’s Price Prediction 2024-25

2024: The year of USDC’s resurgence?

Talking about USDC, the second-largest stablecoin has seen its fortunes shift dramatically in 2024.

The crypto pegged to $1, saw an increase of 30% in its market cap to $26 billion year-to-date (YTD), after suffering heavily last year due to exposure to the U.S. banking crisis.

Source: CryptoQuant