cryptocurrency industry I was happy today There was news that Bitcoin broke the previous record with its all-time high (ATH) price. But whether the coin actually beat that record and what numbers it could beat in the first place depend on who you ask.
decryptionFor example, Tuesday morning news based on US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase reported that the price had seen a high above $69,324 after numerous close calls since Monday. Coinbase’s previous all-time high was below $69,000.
Ro Shirole, chief commercial officer at Bitcoin mining company Saxet, said: decryption He tracked the price of Bitcoin today using: CoinDesk bitcoin index (XBX) utilizes prices from multiple exchanges and weighs them using a proprietary algorithm.
According to XBX, today’s offset price was $68,991, reached in November 2021. And according to the same source, BTC briefly rose to $69,209 today before later crashing below $61,000. But nonetheless, a win is a win and this seemed very clear. Isn’t that right?
Not that fast. sugar CoinGeckoBTC, another major cryptocurrency price tracker, actually reached $69,044 in 2021. And today, according to CoinGecko’s own algorithm-based price aggregation across multiple tracked exchanges, the coin only rose to $68,912 before crashing.
So, if CoinGecko is the source of truth, there is no ATH.
How can such a discrepancy exist between meticulously crafted price tracking algorithms that exist to agree on a single number? It depends on how these various proprietary equations are chosen to determine the price of Bitcoin at any given moment, and there is not necessarily one right answer.
“The ATH quote is not necessarily the absolute highest single transaction price,” Messari Research previously stated. said decryption. “Due to the nature of the historical data we analyze, we cannot always see every transaction for an asset. For some assets, the quoted ATH may refer to the all-time high daily average, or may refer to a price sample from the day the all-time high occurred.”
The human desire for simplicity appears to have led many cryptocurrency traders and media outlets to choose a pristine $69,000 as the benchmark that Bitcoin must surpass today to achieve a new all-time high.
This feat has been achieved on many exchanges, including Binance and Coinbase. For others it was not so. However, in cryptocurrency, perception is everything, and BTC’s unexpected plunge following the ATH celebrations indicates that the market observed this event to have occurred.
But what’s really behind numbers like Bitcoin’s all-time high? Beyond the ceremonial significance, does the absolute truth of whether or not the numbers have been surpassed really matter?
“I don’t place a lot of value on specific numbers,” Saxet’s Shirole said of Bitcoin’s all-time high price.
Instead, he is interested in more practical issues, such as what people believe and how they react to events like today.
He added, “Perceived support seems to be at the bottom when the surrounding area is falling.”
Editor: Andrew Hayward
disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for information purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment or other advice.
