In the last days we saw huge increase in several coins. And for many of them those jumps were unexpected. For me it seemed that huge money came into market. We are getting bigger, but at the same time I found that I loose control over what is going on. Before the market was easier to follow. Every jump had its cause (exchagne, partnerships, etc.). Nowadays it seems that hungry newbies with millions of dollars came to the market. Now it grows due to hunger, but what will happen when those new players jump out of crypto?
I feel you. Too much gains with no news on why. Seems everyone just jumping on everything they see.
You gotta pay attention. This year institutional investors (hedge funds, for example) have been getting in the market. The number of bitcoins is finite. Go back two years, a million dollar purchase would move the entire bitcoin market. Unlike stocks they can't just print more of them to capitalize on a price increase. This was intentional. If 1 bitcoin=1million dollars, then 1 satoshi= 1 cent. This isn't an accident.
So this year, you got funds with BILLIONS in assets buying bitcoins. You got the Winklevoss bros doing their thing. And you just got the FUTURES market stuff happening. There are other things too. But just think about this. The largest hedge fund has over 100 billion dollars in assets. Theoretically they could have swallowed up the whole bitcoin market at the beginning of 2017 with room to spare. But thats just peanuts. Blackrock, a USA investment group, has almost 6 TRILLION in assets. Let that sink in. They could have bought every crypto coin at the beginning of 2017 and it would have barely even showed up on their balance sheets. These are only two investments groups here. There are lots of these guys out there buying bitcoins right now.
Now for the futures markets. 1.5 TRILLION in futures are traded every day. Nuff said about that.
Get the idea? I said that the crypto markets were peanuts at 7k, and they are still peanuts at 15k. The difference between bitcoins and traditional assets is that, without any exceptions that I can think of, bitcoins are finite. Even gold can be mined (never mind the fact that the vast majority of gold is paper and doesn't actually exist). When a stock goes up in price more shares are issued. Heck more shares are issued all the time to pay executives. Assets are constantly being printed.
Also keep in mind that market cap can be misleading. Lets say there are 10 bitcoins. I buy one for $1, the next guy buys 3 for 5$ because he thinks its a good investment. Now 16$ have gone into the market but the market cap is 50$. Because many of us are not in a hurry to sell our bitcoins, the market cap can go up very fast as these institutions pour billions into the market.
There is lots of other stuff I could talk about here, but I think this is enough for you guys to digest for now
Anyway the point is that this isn't happening in a vacuum. You just gotta pay attention.