The $21,460 resistance level stopped Bitcoin's rally, though it continues to trade in the green zone.

Bitcoin's unexpected bullish rally has turned many heads in the cryptocurrency market this year. The asset's bullish price movement has elicited notable reactions from John Reed Stark, the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Internet Enforcement.

Like many other key figures, Reed has taken to Twitter to disclose what he believes is a main factor behind the recent upsurge in Bitcoin's price.

Market manipulation?

In a recent tweet, Reed stated:

"Bitcoin's price is rising for one reason: Market Manipulation. A recent Forbes analysis of 157 crypto exchanges found that 51% of daily bitcoin trading volume being reported was likely bogus (and that was the tip of the iceberg)." Reed asserted in a recent tweet.

His tweets echoed the views of David Gerrard, a journalist and writer who previously expressed his bearish view of digital currencies and blockchain.

Gerard explains that the reason for Bitcoin's rise to $20,000 is not tied to any "macroeconomic actions, regulatory announcements or the strength of the dollar," which, however, obviously is why it has caused some bewilderment.

He maintains that market manipulation is at play, pointing to the recent news of Gemini and Genesis being sued by the SEC, as some of the bearish events that lead him to believe that price pumps are usually "bad news for major players."

Optimism is not off the table

Although the rise has not been secured by fundamentals and deserves a cautious perception, many influencers are rather optimistic about Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies.

Crypto influencer Ben Armstrong is one of the notable figures predicting that Bitcoin is heading towards $25,000 or $30,000 in the next 45 days, although he believes the asset might hover between $20,000 to $25,000 for most of 2023.

PlanB, the creator of the Bitcoin S2F model, is also eyeing Bitcoin at $32,000 in 2024. He expects that price to triple and reach $100,000 during the bull run in 2025.

Traders now seem convinced that the cryptocurrency market is already near the top of the recent rally. Market intelligence platform Santiment notes:

"Are crypto markets seeing a top? Traders are behaving like they believe so, taking this opportunity to profit while given the chance. Bitcoin is seeing its highest profit tx ratio since Feb, 2021. For Ethereum, it's the highest since Oct, 2021."

Next growth target

According to the latest weekly report from Glassnode, $22,400 could be the level to watch next for the major cryptocurrency. This is due to the fact that the realized price of Bitcoin for a long-term holder is currently around $22,400.

Glassnode notes that Bitcoin surpassed all three realized prices of the market back in April 2019.

To understand the concept of "realized price," the realized cap needs to be looked at first. The realized cap is a capitalization model for BTC that values each coin in circulation at the price it was last transacted.

This is different from the usual market cap, which puts the value of all tokens at the same current price of Bitcoin. When the market cap is divided by the total number of coins in circulation, the BTC price is obtained.

However, if this same idea is applied to the realized cap (that is if it's divided by the number of coins), a sort of "realized price" can be derived. The significance of this price is that it's the cost basis of the average holder in the Bitcoin market.

Thus, if the current price of a major cryptocurrency has fallen below the calculated realized price, then investors are taking a loss.

During the recent rally, Bitcoin was able to surpass the base value of short-term holders ($18,000), the level of value of the entire market ($19,700). The selling price for long-term holders of 22,400 dollars the main cryptocurrency has not yet reached.

Thus, settling above the level of $22,400 will be a sign of a return to a bullish trend in the market.

BTC mining difficulty has reached a new all-time high

There was another development in the recent rally: Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 10% in the latest network adjustment and set a new all-time high.

The "mining difficulty" is a feature on the Bitcoin blockchain that controls how hard miners currently find it to mine on the network. The block production rate is the rate at which miners are currently hashing new blocks on the network, and the total amount of computing power that miners have connected to the blockchain is known as the "hashrate." Whenever the value of this metric changes, so does the block production rate. But, as noted earlier, the network wants this value not to change in this way, but instead to remain constant.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased dramatically in the most recent adjustment and set a new all-time high. Because of this rapid increase in hash rate, the network was forced to make such a large positive adjustment in complexity.