I know I'm not the first person to point out this relationship but I think it warrants another mention following the price action that we've been seeing. Following our breakdown from 8500 USD, we entered a downtrend. 7500 USD acted strong support and we went on to bounce off it ~3 times. Now, I think the fourth bounce would have been fatal for the bulls as it would completed a double top continuation and the big mutant H&S that we've been making for some time now. Further more, we were below both a big Ichi Cloud and the 200MA on the 4H.
This fourth bounce never happened because - at seemingly tactical points - after the third bounce, mysterious pumps would arrive out of nowhere and buoy the price up just as it was eyeing another bearish attack on support. Looking at the upper wicks on the hourly, this resembled a price being dragged higher without regard for consensus. Upon breaking out of the downward channel, there was no volume confirmation and the mysterious pumps continued to procrastinate the bearish downturn into never happening.
Anyway, to my point: I think this rally (like the 20k rally) is a Tether bubble. This chart highlights the correlation and the (roughly) month long delay that changes in Tether's market cap have on BTC's price. Anecdotally, look at the price action that we've been seeing and the charts that people have been posting: I found that both of these pointed to a healthy correction to ~6.2k being on the cards and my analysis aligned with that too. Instead, what we have is a rally that can't correct. We breezed through the resistance at 6k having spent months leaning on it as support and now we're not even going to correct and retest it. This isn't the irrational exuberance of FOMO - I believe this is inflation by Tether and - if I'm correct - we should see a pretty steep rally to 10k soon; you've got to dance while the music's playing.
Best of luck on this crazy, one-way escalator and don't forget to keep an eye on the news re. Bitfinex, Tether, and the DoJ. If the Tether market cap starts shrinking or it gets canned all together, hold on to your hats.
P.S.: For those that think the correlation between BTC's price and Tether's market cap comes about due to demand for BTC producing demand for Tether, please check out the statistical analysis at Tether Report dotcom that debunks this and points much more strongly to tether being used to inflate BTC's price when it stagnates. For more on the 20k rally, look up Griffin and Shams.