2 Key Drivers of a Surprise Year-End Crypto Rally

The cryptocurrency market has been in a particularly painful slump for the past ten days or so and has failed to produce the much-anticipated Santa Claus rally.

With the year coming to an end in just a few days, on-chain data actually shows that this could all change in a rather unexpected fashion.

Trading Volumes Mean Gains?

The broader end of 2024 was quite spectacular as BTC skyrocketed from under $70,000 to over $108,000 within less than two months after the US presidential elections. On a micro-scale, though, the asset has been struggling for the past ten days as it tumbled from that aforementioned all-time high to $92,000 in days and sits at $94,000 now.

Moreover, the trading volumes have slumped in the past week, which is quite expected given the Holiday season. That, though, could actually be the propeller of a price rally, according to data from Santiment.

The analytics platform indicated that in times of low trading volumes, whales play a particularly important role if their accumulation levels continue.

In the final days of 2024, trading volume is way down across crypto sectors. Overall, there has been -64% less trading in the past week compared to the previous week (which included Bitcoin’s all-time high).

The trading downtrend of trading, particularly among speculative… pic.twitter.com/ZTGbED2rak

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) December 27, 2024

Many large investors have been on a shopping spree lately for different assets, not just BTC. In fact, “speculative altcoins” are even more susceptible to price gains on such occasions, which could be beneficial for meme coins such as DOGE.

On-chain data shared by Ali Martinez indicates that Dogecoin whales used the dip to acquire more of the largest meme coin in the past few days.

Whales bought over 90 million #Dogecoin $DOGE in the past 48 hours! pic.twitter.com/lGsMtz0iPp

— Ali (@ali_charts) December 27, 2024

Stablecoins on Binance

The other factor is the growing stablecoin reserve on the world’s largest crypto exchange. Binance has seen a massive intake of such assets, which are typically deployed to accumulate BTC or altcoins. According to CryptoQuant, the exchange now holds $29 billion in USDT and USDC, which “underlines Binance’s pivotal role in providing liquidity and stability to the market during this explosive growth phase.”

“Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are critical for traders and institutions, serving as a bridge between fiat and crypto while enabling seamless trading during volatile periods,” – reads the report. It concluded that this particular surge of the two biggest stablecoins by market cap is a “bullish signal.”