JPMorgan: Retail investors may be the main driving force behind the rise in cryptocurrency market in February

According to a research report by JPMorgan on Thursday, it believes that retail investors may have been the main driver of the strong rise in the cryptocurrency market in February. Analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said that there will be three major cryptocurrency catalysts in the coming months, including Bitcoin halving events, Ethereum upgrades and SEC decisions on Ethereum spot ETFs, which are reasons for retail FOMO. The first two catalyst events have basically been priced in, while there is only a 50% chance of the third catalyst occurring. This kind of retail impulse can be seen from the accumulated Bitcoin flow on-chain, with smaller wallets having larger flows, indicating high participation from retail investors. The report pointed out that platforms mainly serving retail customers such as Block (SQ), PayPal (PYPL) and Robinhood (HOOD) saw increased trading activity and investor traffic in Q4 2023; Coinbase (COIN) also experienced growth representing an increase in trading activity among retail investors during this period.