The price of bitcoin (BTC) price has recovered to $94,000 since hitting lows under $75,000 early this month. The surge is characterized by crypto whales, large investors with substantial capital, snapping up coins from the market, in activity seen as confirming the rally.

The renewed demand from whales is evident in Glassnode’s proprietary Accumulation Trend Score, which reflects the relative size of entities actively soaking up new coins on-chain. A score of 1 indicates that, on aggregate, the entities are accumulating, while a value close to zero suggests otherwise.

As of Thursday, wallets holding over 10,000 BTC had an accumulation score of 0.90, and those with 1,000 BTC to 10,000 BTC scored 0.7. Smaller wallets were pivoting to accumulation with a trend score 0.5.

«So far, large players have been buying into this rally,» Glassnode noted on X.

Meanwhile, data from CryptoQuant revealed the highest BTC outflow from centralized exchanges in two years when analyzed using the 100-day moving average.

«A review of historical patterns suggests that this could imply re-accumulation of assets by investors,» commentators at CryptoQuant said.

Outflows from centralized exchanges are taken to represent investor preference for direct custody of their coins, a sign of long-term holding strategy.

ARK Invest raised its decade-end bitcoin (BTC) price target to as high as $2.4 million apiece after revising its assumptions on active supply, which excludes lost or long-held coins. The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading around $94,000.

The bull-projection figure, 60% more than its January 2024 estimate, reflects a 72% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from last December through the end of 2030. The base case estimates a BTC price of $1.2 million — a 53% CAGR — while the bear case projects $500,000, equating to a 32% CAGR.

David Puell, an analyst at the Cathie Wood-led investment company, used a model based on total addressable market and projected market penetration across several sectors. These include institutional investment, bitcoin’s role as «digital gold,» its use as a haven in emerging markets, adoption for nation-state and corporate treasury holdings and on-chain financial services built on the bitcoin network.

In November last year, Puell targeted $104,000-$124,000 by year-end. Bitcoin ended December at $93,440 en route to hitting a record high of $109,000 in January before slumping to lows around $74,500 earlier this month.

The rally since then is partly driven by declining exchange balances, which indicate that more BTC is being withdrawn into private wallets, a sign of long-term holding behavior. According to Glassnode data, exchange-held BTC has fallen from approximately 3 million in November 2024 to 2.6 million, reinforcing the growing bullish sentiment around the cryptocurrency.

STX, the native token of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Stacks, has surged 56% in seven days to become the week’s best-performing of the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies amid hopes for institutional adoption.

The token hit a two-month high of 92 cents on Friday after gaining more than 21% in the past 24 hours to become the day’s biggest advancer, according to CoinDesk data.

Stacks is the world’s leading layer 2 for running smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. On Tuesday, BitGo, the digital asset custody and infrastructure provider and a backer of the wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) token, opened the door for its customers explore yield-generating opportunities on Stacks by integrating sBTC, a synthetic derivative that represents bitcoin (BTC) in a 1:1 ratio on the Stacks blockchain.

“SBTC opens the door to programmable, decentralized financial products without compromising Bitcoin’s core principles — and we’re just getting started,» said Abishek Singh, a product manager at BitGo. «With over $3 trillion in processed transactions and more than $48 billion in staked assets, BitGo is uniquely positioned to help institutions tap into this new era of Bitcoin utility.»

STX plays several roles in the Stacks ecosystem, including enabling connection between the parent blockchain and Bitcoin, supporting smart-contract creation and enabling network governance. It’s also used to pay transaction fees and plays a key role in the proof-of-transfer consensus mechanism that allows holders to earn BTC by locking their STX.

The sBTC token allows holders to participate in Stacks’ DeFi ecosystem while keeping the price peg to their underlying bitcoin. The sBTC withdrawal facility, expected to be implemented April 30, will allow institutions to move seamlessly between BTC and sBTC, opening doors for creating new applications encompassing Stacks’ smart contract features and Bitcoin’s security.

Ecosystem liquidity improving

Liquidity in the Stacks-based decentralized finance ecosystem is improving, the protocol announced on X early Friday, pointing to an over 400% surge in the stablecoin supply in the first quarter, the third-largest behind Morph and Cronos.

The total stablecoin supply in the ecosystem was nearly $7 million, up from around $1 million in early January, according to data source DefiLlama.