Yesterday, Nikita Bier, head of product at X, reverted a major algorithm change that had slashed impressions on posts from the Crypto Twitter (CT) community. The price of bitcoin (BTC) promptly rallied 6% within from $91,846 to over $97,500 by noon today.
People noticed the immediate correlation.
Expanding the chart of BTC to January 9, the date when X’s algorithmic punishment of CT began, further strengthened that argument.
Indeed, after a strong year-to-date rally from $87,400 heading into the January 9 algo downgrade, BTC had appreciated approximately 5% to nearly $92,000.
After Bier unveiled a secret initiative at X to deprioritize CT impressions across the platform, the rally in BTC promptly stalled.
The world’s largest crypto asset drifted lower amid the CT shadow ban, hitting $90,000 several times. Then, as mentioned above, Bier ended the ban, and BTC promptly rallied 6% in a day and a half.
Read more: Crypto Twitter says Nikita Bier killed X — and ‘gm’
No more shadow ban, plus many other factors
As fun as the allegation is, correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate causation.
Over the same time period, news about Donald Trump intimidating Fed Chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates to boost asset prices, and Iran’s currency collapse, have sent substantial flows into safe haven assets against currency risks.
Gold, over the same year-to-date time period, has rallied 7%. Its far larger market capitalization — $32 trillion relative to $2 trillion for BTC — might explain some of that BTC’s 10% rally.
Similarly, silver has rallied 19%, further supporting this sector-wide and indiscriminate rally in fiat currency alternatives.
Moreover, spot BTC ETF fund inflows have been particularly strong over the past two trading days, adding over $860 million. Michael Saylor’s Strategy also announced a $1.2 billion purchase on Monday to help restart the rally.
Various analysts have also published bullish BTC price forecasts, and positive political news continues to fuel speculative allocations.
While the curious timing of the resumption in BTC’s rally aligned neatly with X’s algorithm reversal, the broader surge into currency alternatives, not to mention ETF inflows and political catalysts, adds more color to social media’s fun shadow ban argument.
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