Last week’s bitcoin price surge, initiated a chain react across all major bitcoin exchanges and bitcoin’s trading volume reached its highest point in since late 2014. So, so did the price surge enkindle the rise in the trading volume? or did it go the other way round; the boosted trading volume pushed bitcoin price “to the moon”?

Bitcoin Trading Volume Rising Across All Major Exchanges:

According to blockchain.info, the bitcoin/USD exchange volume reached $42,637,208 on the 5th of November, the day that witnessed a price high of $447.47 on Bitstamp. Although the price exceeded $500 on the 4th of November, the trading volume wasn’t as high as it was the following day. In my opinion, this huge volume was secondary to “profit harvesting” behavior of traders who decided to exit their long positions to take their profits.

According to Coinmarketcap.com, 22.7% of last week’s trading volume was executed on Bitfinex, as more than $12 Million worth of bitcoins were exchanged on Bitfinex’s platforms. OkCoin contributed around %17 to the total trading volume, with more than $9 Million worth of bitcoins traded on its platform last week. On the other hand, around $9 Million worth of bitcoins were traded on Bitstamp last week, which contributed around 16.8% to the total trading volume.

Why On Earth Did Bitcoin Trading Volume Soar?

Well, no one can clearly answer this question and there are already a few “conspiracy theories” circulating including the effect of the Pyramid Scheme known as MMM, that was rhapsodized by Sergie Mavrodi, a well known Russian Ponzi scheme plotter and it even went as far as claiming that ISIL is buying a lot of bitcoins, which caused last week’s bullish wave!!

In my opinion, the recent rise in bitcoin trading volume is the result of a collection of factors that worked together to push the volume to a historical level; those factors include:

1- The increased adoption of bitcoin that the world witnessed during 2014 and 2015.

2- The ruling of the Court of Justice across all EU countries to exempt bitcoin from VAT (value-added tax) on the 22nd of October.

3- The imposition of capital controls across China on the 29th of September, downsized the Yuan and tempted many Chinese to consider bitcoin as an alternative.

The recent spike in bitcoin price and trading volume is very promising and reflects a heightened global interest in the blockchain technology. On the other hand, the collapse of some of the world’s biggest Fiat currencies such as the Euro, JPY and others have urged the world to seek salvation in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

References:

1- Blockchain.info. Bitcoin USD Exchange Volume:

https://blockchain.info/charts/trade-volume?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

2- Coinmarketcap.com. Crypto-Currency Market Capitalizations and Exchange Trading Volume:

http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

3-FT Alphaville. “I’m no crook” declares MMM scamster.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/

4- InfoCuria – Case-law of the Court of Justice. 22 October 2015.

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=170305&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=604646

5- The Wall Street Journal. China Caps Overseas Cash Withdrawals

http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-caps-overseas-cash-withdrawals-1443520794