Is Bitcoin ready for the Santa Rally: Off to $4400.

The constant losses Bitcoin has been experiencing in the past month were sharply interrupted yesterday, December 17th.  After trading in the red for a larger portion of the last 34 days, Bitcoin’s value is seeing a small surge, and the coin’s price exceeded $3,500 yesterday and is currently trading at $3469 according to CoinGecko. Many are now wondering whether this is a start of a recovery, or simply Bitcoin’s last attempt to resist the bears.

Is the shift in the market real?

BTC is also not the only one, as nearly all coins within the top 100 are currently trading in the green, some of which are experiencing massive 22% gains, such as EOS. XRP, the second largest coin by market cap, is currently experiencing a 13% surge, while Ethereum’s growth remains at 7%.

The new surge, appropriately named the “Santa rally”, has impacted the entire market, and the total crypto market cap has just exceeded $112 billion. Even Bitcoin’s own market cap climbed back up to over $61 billion at the time of writing. The price bounce is expected to fuel investors’ hopes that the worst might be over, despite the fact that recent predictions said that BTC might drop to around $2,800 before the real surge arrives.

There are also those who believe that the current price surge is nothing more than an attempt at market manipulation, potentially coming from the Wall Street itself. While this is all speculation at this point, the reason for the rally remains unclear, which is why it is not surprising that many remain untrustworthy towards such a sudden change.

Right now, Bitcoin is around 83% below its all-time high, while the total crypto market cap lost around $700 billion in the last 12 months.

Following the start of the surge, Bitcoin trading volume also picked up and has risen by around $2 billion within the last 24 hours, currently being just above $6 billion. Considering the fact that investors and traders around the world took this opportunity to return to the market, many are hoping that the shift will be a long-term one.

If true, it will match the expectations of numerous experts who have been predicting a bull run in the final weeks of 2018. However, as mentioned earlier, the majority of analysts did not expect a real bull run before 2019, at best. To many in the crypto community, this is just further proof that the crypto nature remains extremely unpredictable, which is why nothing can ever be said with certainty.