Building on recent momentum, Bitcoin prices made it to just shy of $53,000 during Asian trading today. The move has seen the asset at its highest price for 17 weeks, adding to gains made on Monday.

At the time of press, BTC trades at $52,800, according to Tradingview. More interestingly, a golden cross on the daily timeframe was imminent and likely to occur within the next day or two.

This is a longer-term bullish indicator that appears when a faster moving average crosses above a slower one (the 50-day and 200-day in this case).

Miners Taking Profits

On-chain analytics provider, Glassnode, commented that it appears to be institutions driving the momentum again.

“As renewed optimism follows positive price action, on-chain transaction volumes are showing continued growth in dominance by large, institutional sized capital.”

In its weekly on-chain report, the firm stated that BTC miners have started to take profits this week amid the hash rate recovery. Over half the hash rate has recovered now since the China-induced mining migration began in June.

“The increase in hash-rate is likely a combination of previously obsolete hardware finding a second lease on life, and miners in China successfully relocating, re-establishing, or re-homing their hardware and operations,” it added.

Mining revenue has returned to July 2019 levels which is around $380,000 per Exahash. Some miners have started taking profits now that Bitcoin has reclaimed the $50K level. This is still bullish, though some of that revenue will be reallocated to hardware and operation expansion.

The markets have absorbed this selling pressure as the miner net position change has returned to neutral levels.

Bitcoin HODLers Refusing to Sell

Another metric analyzed by the firm is the movement of coins of different ages. It observed that the majority of BTC being spent or sold at the moment are highly liquid as old coins remain dormant and hodled.

“This indicates that conviction to HODL is extremely high and a lack of liquid supply could squeeze spot market prices higher.”

The research concluded that investors who own coins older than a year are spending less and HODLing more, even as prices rally.

All of the momentum has lifted altcoins as well, some of which are outperforming BTC at the moment. The total market cap has gained 2% on the day to reach $2.46 trillion – its highest level since the mid-May all-time high of $2.55 trillion.