Arbitrum price soars after DeFi whale address resumes ARB accumulation

On June 2, the price of Arbitrum jumped alongside the top-ranking cryptocurrencies after the United States Senate voted to raise the debt limit.

Why is the ARB price up today?

The price of Arbitrum (ARB) rose 9% to an intraday high of $1.25, beating the crypto market’s total overall gains of 1.5% in the same period.

Arbitrum’s outperformance coincided with some strange buying activity associated with popular trader Andrew Kang’s crypto addresses.

Notably, on June 2, the Mechanism Capital co-founder deposited $1 million worth of stablecoins into Arbitrum pools and spent over 20% of it buying RDNT, the native token of decentralized finance lending platform Radiant Capital.

Later, Kang exchanged his newly bought and existing RDNT reserves for $867,000 worth of ARB. Then, he deposited the proceeds to Radiant Capital to borrow Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), according to data resource Lookonchain.

The platform noted:

“Seems like Andrew Kang is using leverage to go long $ARB on @RDNTCapital. Buy $ARB → Deposit $ARB → Borrow $USDC → Buy $ARB.”

Is the ARB rally sustainable?

Lookonchain revealed that an anonymous whale deposited $1.5 million worth of ARB to the OKX exchange, simultaneous to Kang’s abovementioned transfers.

Whale”0xf59b” finally waited for the rise of $ARB and deposited 1.2M $ARB ($1.5M) into #OKX 30 minutes ago.

He withdrew 1.2M $ARB from #OKX on May 8th, and the buying price may be around $1.2.https://t.co/cJReZfg007 pic.twitter.com/jFwBRtPUpK

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 2, 2023

Investors deposit tokens to crypto exchanges typically for selling. That raises ARB’s pullback possibilities in the coming days if its demand drops. Interestingly, the token’s technical setup on the daily chart suggests the same.

Related: Arbitrum-based Jimbos Protocol hacked, losing $7.5M in Ether

Notably, ARB has printed what appears to be a bear flag, confirmed by the price consolidating between two rising, parallel trendlines, after a strong move downward. As a rule, a bear flag resolves after the price breaks below the lower trendline and falls by as much as the previous downtrend’s height.

That puts ARB on the road to $0.95 in June, down circa 20% from current price levels.

Conversely, a decisive breakout above the flag’s upper trendline will likely invalidate the bearish outlook, setting the Arbitrum token on the course toward $1.35, a resistance level from the March to May 2023 session.