Trading cryptocurrencies has become much more than a hobby for many people who now see it as a serious profession. If you want to become a crypto trader, you have to understand its prices. Particularly, you need to understand what affects them to know when to enter or exit specific markets.
Demand and Supply
Like all other assets, supply and demand affect the price of cryptocurrencies. For example, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins, which creates scarcity that impacts both demand and supply. This scarcity also leads to the stability of bitcoin’s prices, which are not as relative as we have seen with either cryptocurrency.
Some cryptocurrencies also have a burn mechanism. Burning means removing cryptocurrencies from circulation by sending them to unrecoverable or null wallets. This stops the supply and circulation of the token from impacting its price.
Social Media and Prevailing Sentiment
Economists measure marketing sentiment using a Greed or Fear Index to see what is driving market activity. Both can help indicate if a market will be bullish or bearish.
A bullish market is great for all investors because prices are constantly rising in such a market.
A bearish market sees prices fall and is often followed by a lot of selling and lower/discounted prices.
Market sentiment can lead to people making bearish or bullish bets on cryptocurrency, affecting its price. Social media has emerged as one of the most potent drivers of market sentiment. For example, posts by people like Elon Musk have led to a rise in the price of specific coins and projects.
Also, hype from news reports can drive the price up or down.
Market Activity
People tend to follow the money. If many people buy a cryptocurrency, its supply will decrease while its demand and price increase. This brings in more people and the price keeps increasing. You can tell when this is happening by looking at the price and market activity charts of specific cryptocurrencies on a trading platform. You can then buy or sell cryptocurrency on the trading platform depending on your strategy and what you think will happen.
Node Counts
Nodes are computers on a blockchain. Many nodes mean many people are interacting with a cryptocurrency, and this is a show of its strength. Also, a blockchain with many nodes is more likely to be resilient, which makes people confident about it.
Research has shown that a high node count and increase in activity typically precedes a price increase. If you see the number of nodes increasing and notice an increase in market capitalization and activity of a specific project, that could be a good indicator to buy while the price is as low as it is.
Macroeconomics
While it remains a great hedge against typical market forces and changes, cryptocurrencies can be affected by different factors. An example is a recession. Many people do not invest in a recession because they do not want to take on a high-risk investment at such a volatile time.
Cryptocurrency prices can fluctuate a lot, and you can know when they are about to change by knowing what to look for. The indicator above can tell you where the price is likely to go so you can take advantage of it or exit an unfavorable position.