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Bitcoin
and other digital assets were rising Thursday and following tech stocks higher in a rally as analysts eyed indications that influential cryptocurrency market participants continue to accumulate bitcoin.

The price of bitcoin rose 2% over the past 24 hours to just shy of $40,000. The leading crypto continues to trade in a relatively tight range around that level but remains volatile, falling as low as $38,000 in recent days and changing hands around $43,000 a week ago.

Bitcoin and other digital assets should in theory trade independently of mainstream financial markets, but they have proved correlated with other risk-sensitive assets like stocks — especially technology stocks. 

The tech-heavy

Nasdaq
was poised to rally on Thursday, with futures tracking the index ticking more than 2% higher. The sector was outperforming after first-quarter results from

Meta Platforms

(ticker: FB) sent shares in the Facebook and Instagram parent company 17% higher in premarket trading. Big Tech earnings remain in focus, with

Apple

(AAPL) and

Amazon

(AMZN) among the companies due to report in the day ahead.

Earnings-driven swings in the tech sector are likely to continue influencing risk sentiment in wider markets and the price of bitcoin. However, analysts have also seen technical indicators suggesting independent strength in cryptos based on the continued accumulation of bitcoin by significant holders, or “whales.”

“Whilst retail sentiment is extremely bearish, I remain cautiously optimistic, as many metrics suggest we are in an accumulation phase,” said Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at digital asset broker

GlobalBlock

(ticker: BLOK.Canada). 

“Whale holdings have risen to its highest since September last year. We can see that when whale holdings increased dramatically last September, it led to a significant increase in price in November,” Sotiriou said. “As whales have a substantial impact on the market, this metric is an important one to take note of.”

Bitcoin’s smaller peer,

ether,
also was higher. The token underpinning the Ethereum blockchain network rose 1% to above $2,900; it was trading below $2,900 on Wednesday but was changing hands as high as $3,150 last Thursday.

Smaller cryptos, or “altcoins,” were broadly in the green.

Luna
rose 3% while

solana
and

cardano
both gained almost 1%.

“Memecoins”— called that because they were initially intended as internet jokes rather than significant blockchain projects — were rare fallers, having recently outperformed.

Shiba inu
lost 0.5% and

dogecoin
dropped 2%.

Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]