Analysts at Bank of America recorded a large-scale withdrawal of bitcoins from exchange wallets.
The bank’s report notes that in early April, $368 million worth of cryptocurrency was sent for offline storage in a week. The researchers noted that this month marked the second largest outflow of BTC from trading venues.
Report authors Andrew Moos and Alkesh Shah believe that most investors will move to over-the-counter bitcoin storage in the coming months. This is a signal of a soon change in trend and resumption of the BTC rally.
The Bank of America report says: Investors are moving coins from exchange addresses to their personal wallets and they intend to keep them, indicating a potential reduction in sell-side pressure.
Strategists attribute the cryptocurrency’s exit from trading venues to stricter policies by U.S. authorities, which have begun to closely monitor bitcoin exchanges.
The largest platforms, such as Coinbase and Binance, came under scrutiny. Bitcoin strengthened to $30,264 by the end of this week. In the past seven days, its capitalization rose nearly 9 percent to $585.462 billion.