This is the seventh similar withdrawal from the largest US exchange this year alone.
Bitcoin’s price went on a roll in the past few hours after the US CPI announcement and following a massive BTC outflow from Coinbase.
Although the recipient of those 16,021 BTC is still unknown, CryptoQuant’s analysts suggest it was an institutional player.
The report from today indicates that 16,021 BTC were withdrawn from Coinbase in the early hours of May 15. Given bitcoin’s current price tag, this amount is worth just over $1 billion.
The analyst said this is the seventh similar outflow from Coinbase in 2024. Moreover, they indicated that such outflows have intensified since February 19, roughly a month after the US SEC greenlighted nearly a dozen spot Bitcoin ETFs. Coinbase serves as the custodian for most ETFs.
Although CryptoQuant’s analyst said this transfer could be an internal movement of Coinbase funds, they suggested that it was not:
“There is a high probability that this transaction is an institutional purchase.”
The withdrawal came just a few hours before the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers came out, which were exactly as anticipated at 3.4%.
BTC’s price reacted with an immediate rally after the announcement of the April inflation rate and jumped to $64,000. However, it kept pumping in the following hour or so and tapped a multi-day peak of just over $64,500 before retracing by around $500.
Numerous analysts and experts speculated in the past few days that the cryptocurrency will see its next bull rally only when the US Federal Reserve finally decides to cut the interest rates. Such a scenario is possible only if the inflation percentages decline to under 3% and down to around 2%.