What makes cryptocurrency prices rise and fall?

If you’re crypto curious and looking to better understand how cryptocurrency works before you put your hard earned money in, then this post is for you. Crypto is the wild wild west of investing. While cryptocurrencies are traded like stocks in the stock market, the crypto market is nothing like the Dow Jones, Nasdaq or S&P 500. Crypto is unique, with prices driven by factors that don’t exist in other money markets. If you want to make money with crypto it’s critical you know what makes cryptocurrency prices rise and fall.

Cryptocurrency markets

Cryptocurrency is traded between parties in markets. The demand and supply of a particular cryptocurrency in a specific market will set a baseline for its price action, whether that be upwards or downwards. But did you know that unlike stocks, there are both centralised (CEX) and decentralised (DEX) crypto trading markets? It’s important to know this because the price is determined differently in each type of exchange.

How is the price of crypto set on centralised exchanges?

On centralised crypto exchanges, the price of a crypto asset is determined between two parties using the traditional order book model that conventional exchanges like the S&P 500 or ASX use. Order books are just a record of all open buy and sell orders for a particular crypto. The spread between buy and sell prices determines the depth of the order book and the current market price.

In this model, the CEX acts as an intermediary to clear trading transactions and provides custody services for your crypto assets.Trades occur on the CEXs server rather than directly on the blockchain.

The leading centralised exchange by volume is Binance. It’s also the one we recommend you get started on as covers more small cap coins than its rival Coinbase. Binance has a hot mobile wallet with all the bells and whistles you could wish for – check it out here.

If you’re in the US and you want to set up on Binance you’ll need to use BolsaDX which is a Binance brand that operates in Latin America and can be used by folks in the US. Binance is not available in the US.

How is the price of crypto set on decentralised exchanges?

Peer-to-peer trading occurs on DEXs through automated smart contracts (programs) that execute trades without an intermediary. DEXs use liquidity pool protocols to determine crypto pricing. These exchanges execute trades or ‘swaps’ between users directly and instantly from wallet to wallet. There is no intermediary like in a CEX.

Swaps are made in one of two ways: through an order book that interacts with the blockchain, or through an automated market maker (AMM) approach. Since we already know what order books are, lets talk about AMMs. AMMs remove the need for counter-parties to set the price. Instead, AMMs us algorithms to set the price, which means that you can trade a particular coin or token regardless of whether there’s someone on the other end of the trade. To facilitate this, “liquidity pools,” are needed. These pools pay users to keep some of their funds in a smart contract that can then be drawn on for trades to occur.

With AMMs there are no prior orders in an order book. There are only takers (buyers) looking to exchange a specific cryptocurrency pair.

DEXs are non-custodial, which means you are responsible for managing the safety of your crypto. You keep your crypto secure whilst trading on DEXs by using a hardware wallet and seed phrase recovery wallet. You can find the best hardware wallets to keep your crypto safe right here and the best metal seed phrase storage wallet for your private keys here.

UniSwap and SushiSwap are the two biggest DEXs in crypto at present.

Both CEX and DEX rely on the demand of buyers and the supply from sellers (or liquidity providers) to set the price of a trade or swap. So if crypto prices are determined by demand and supply in these markets, let’s look at the factors that influence the commitment of those buyers (demand) and of sellers or liquidity providers (supply) themselves.

11 market movers that cause cryptocurrency prices to rise and fall

What drives people to buy and sell their assets in different markets is a complex discussion. People can be influenced by the market sentiment, news, their own personal circumstances, market analytics, trading signals, etc etc. So lets look with more granularity at 11 factors that can move the crypto market and cause cryptocurrency prices to rise and fall.

1. Bitcoin
2. Whale manipulation
3. Trading patterns
4. Trading bots
5. The news that moves the market
6. Airdrops
7. Coin burns
8. Pump and dump groups
9. Major exchange coin listings
10. Rebranding
11. Project partnership announcements

1.Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the king of crypto and its price action in both directions moves the rest of the market. If you want to know more about when Bitcoin moves the price of other coins up or down, have a read of this great article on the crypto market fundamentals you need to know before investing.

2. Whale manipulation

Whales are crypto holders with very large bags of a particular coin. You can get Bitcoin whales, Ethereum whales etc. Whales can use their coin share to move the market with large buy or sell orders. Whales can do this in conjunction with options trades, to make profits. It is particularly easy in small cap coins as it doesn’t take much trading volume to spike or drop the price. One example of price manipulation might be if there is a lot of trading volume on a particular coin but the price is going sideways or downhill. It may be that whales are waiting in the water as the price sinks and weak hands hit the sell button.

3. Trading patterns

Crypto traders trade assets according to the same trading rules and patterns. They all use the same indicators. This makes the patterns they use to signal buy and sell trades self fulfilling. Everyone sees the signal and makes the trade. Trading patterns constantly influence whether the price will move up or down, depending on the volume of trades and traders.

4. Trading bots

This one is linked to trading patterns. Programs are now available so that traders can execute trades using bots (or automation) and based on conventional trading patterns and rules. For example, it’s common for trading bots to be set up to buy up a certain cryptocurrency when the price retraces to .618 of its previous high. This is based on the Fibonacci retracement rule and its application to market trading. Sometimes its possible to actually see trading bots provide price support at this level in trading charts and order books on centralised exchanges.

5. The news that moves the market

Crypto markets are very news sensitive. Project news and development milestones can and routinely do cause particular coins to pump or dump. Hardfork, testnet and mainnet release announcements will generally move the price significantly. In many cases the price of a coin will run up before the project testnet or mainnet date, and sell off just before the testnet or mainnet release.

Similarly, the price of a coin will tumble if a published milestone is missed or the project is hacked, experiences a development failure or is exploited in any way.

Coin Market Calendar is a great site to see if there is any upcoming project news for a particular coin or token.

6. Airdrops

Airdrops are a promotional event in crypto to raise awareness of a particular project or coin. They usually involve the project group sending free coins to the wallets of existing coin holders. So it’s basically a free money giveaway to reward project faithfuls. When it happens, the price of a particular coin can go thermal nuclear.

7. Coin burns

A coin burn is a process of intentionally destroying or ‘burning’ coins to make them unusable and reduce the total market supply of that particular coin and increase the value. It’s the crypto market version of a stock buyback in conventional markets. Coin burns are used to stabilise the value of a coin and they are often scheduled ahead as an incentive for buyers to hold the particular coin (and benefit from price rises when coin burn occurs).

8. Pump and dump groups

Pump and dump schemes are not specific to crypto but they are pretty common price manipulation attempts. Pump and dumps are a scam so beware. They go something like this. A group of investors (organisers) – usually on Telegram or other social platforms like Discord, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook – collude to buy a low cap coin slowly over time so as not to raise its price. The same group then pays an inner circle to promote the bejeezus out of the coin, convincing other investors it’s going to the moon. When those investors (the outer rim) jump in, the organisers sell causing the price to dump immediately. It’s the quick or the dead, the organises versus the bagholders.

9. Major exchange coin listings

This is a well know strategy for some traders – to buy smaller coins and tokens on DEXs or unknown, low volume exchanges and wait and hope that the coins are listed on large exchanges like Binance, Coinbase or Kucoin where most of the trading volume is. Because of the larger volume on these exchanges, newly listed coins can pump hard at the time of listing. This is when existing holders will sell, often causing the coins to dump again straight after. It’s a risky strategy but can be high reward if you know what you’re doing.

10. Rebranding

Rebranding can cause the price of a cryptocurrency to rise if there is significant social media to raise awareness of the event. Rebranding is seen as a move to popularise a particular project and cryptocurrency, driving demand for its coins and tokens and pushing the price up.

10. Project partnership announcements

When small crypto projects announce partnerships with established mainstream brands, the price will often pump. For example when Steller Lumens announced a partnership with IBM, boom the price when through the roof. The fastest way to find out about these announcements is by following the project on Twitter or on a site called cryptopanic. If you find out early enough you may be able to pick up some coins before the price pump and make a decent profit.

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