• The recent market rally sees Bitcoin posing stronger gains over altcoins as Whale sentiment and trading volumes shift to BTC.
• With Bitcoin’s recent breakout and Nasdaq correlation, analysts are expecting the BTC price to touch $56,000 this year.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) registered solid gains on Wednesday, February 15, gaining more than 12% and inching closer to $25,000. As of press time, BTC is trading 8.11% up at a price of $24,597 and a market cap of $474 billion.

Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin and altcoins together have added more than $100 billion to investors’ wealth. As per on-chain indicators, Bitcoin is likely to outperform Ethereum ahead this year. Pseudonymous crypto analyst KALEO tweeted to his 562K followers that the Ethereum/Bitcoin pair (ETH/BTC) is now trading below a diagonal trendline. Thus, ETH is likely to trail Bitcoin in terms of gains. KALEO wrote:

ETH/BTC finally broke beneath the high timeframe support line we’ve been watching. Remember, this chart only shows relative strength to BTC, so expect to see BTC begin to outpace a bit more rapidly sometime over the next several weeks.

Also if we see yesterday’s pump, Bitcoin has outperformed all other altcoins in percentage terms. While the BTC price popped up by 12%, the top-tier altcoins gained somewhere in the range of 7-10%. On-chain data provider Santiment noted that as altcoins fall behind, whales and trading volumes could shift over to Bitcoin. It noted:

Bitcoin is up to $22.9k, and it saw a nice isolated price pump approximately 6 hours ago that pushed it ahead of most of the altcoin pack. January was the time of alt recoveries, so keep an eye on whales & trading volume shifting over to $BTC.

Bitcoin Primed to Rally to $56,000?

As of now, Bitcoin has also posed more than 50% gains this year in 2023 so far. Some market analysts believe that the BTC price could gain another 100% from the current levels. In a word to crypto publication CoinDesk, William Noble, director of research at Emerging Assets Group said:

“Bitcoin is breaking out from a long basing formation. There is a saying, the bigger the base, the higher into space. Bitcoin may move from consolidation to another parabolic move back to $56,000”.

Back in December 2020, Noble had accurately predicted Bitcoin’s surge from $20,000 to $40,000. Another confirmation of the end of Bitcoin’s downtrend is the widely-tracked momentum indicator relative strength index (RSI) that has diverged bullishly on the weekly chart.

Apart from this, we know that Bitcoin shares a close correlation to the tech-heavy Nasdaq index. Recently, Nasdaq also gave a breakout from the bull flag. A bull flag form after a correction follows a rise. A breakout from the bull flag is an indicator of a resumption in the broader uptrend.

Noble added: “In Nasdaq, there is a bull flag. There is a saying, ‘flags fly at half-mast,’ meaning there could be another major run higher in equities to a new all-time high”.