A “committed actor” may have behind the recent bull run

• CoinMetrics stated that a single trader was behind the recent bull run.
• The trader executed several trades across multiple exchanges starting with HitBTC.

A lot of theories have been put up to find out the reason behind the recent bull run and CoinMetrics, the crypto analytics firm, seem to have the answer. According to them, the bull run was caused by a single trader, who they referred to as a “committed actor.” This actor’s trade began at 4:30 UTC and continued for an hour. CoinMetrics also believes that these trades started on HitBTC, but they acknowledged that “we cannot rule out wash trading at HitBTC.”

The trader executed several trades across multiple exchanges when the liquidity was lowest to have the largest possible impact on prices. CoinMetrics added:

“Although this cannot be known for sure, such trades would have been designed to trigger stop losses and force a short squeeze through liquidations of margin positions and short futures positions.

Several explanations were put forward including a response to an April Fool’s article or that a single buyer went long with notional value of approximately $100 million.

Our theory is that a single committed actor went long and traded in a manner that maximized price impact. The movement in price started at 04:30 UTC time, the point in the day where global liquidity is at a minimum.”