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- 🟣 The waiting game
🟣 The waiting game
Bitcoin grinds higher, in a relatively quiet post FOMC week
Bitcoin has been coiling itself into a tight range over the past week since the FOMC meeting, often moving no more than 1-2% (which for BTC, is small) in a day.
That has put measures of daily volatility into a nosedive, now reaching down to levels not seen since September 2023. A few more days of boring price action, and these will reach extremes.
Like Newton’s third law of motion or a compressed spring, when volatility turns around, it’s more likely than not to result in a violent expansion.
The crypto market is now in search of a new catalyst.
On the bullish side, the dollar index (DXY) looks to have hit resistance, after being in an uptrend since the start of 2024. And US markets are surging to all-time highs with the S&P 500 trading above 5000 for the first time. Both tend to be simpatico with bitcoin’s rise, although the correlations have waned of late.
On shorter time-frames, bitcoin is testing the $43,500 level, where it has been repeatedly brushed back, while steadily trending higher on dips with buyers stepping in especially at or below $42,500.
Ether has been a bit perkier this week, but continues to struggle at the $2,380 area, where it was rejected strongly on Jan. 30, and has yet to close a 4-hour candle above.
The GBTC taper: Daily outflows out of Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF have been consistently on the decline across the past 11 trading days.
Eric Balchunas describes this chart as one “you could [definitely hang] on a gallery wall, sip some wine and ponder its meaning…”
Source: Eric Balchunas
The market has taken an interest in high-throughput blockchains, and Sui headline metrics show positive signs of growth for the nascent layer-1.
Speculate positioning has decreased across the board and ETH investors must now look towards the Dencun upgrade, a potential spot ETH ETF, and restaking as tailwinds.
Don’t get me wrong, bitcoin ETFs are good thing for the industry — but we can’t forget about bitcoin’s original ethos among all the price talk
Solana went down — again — but its native cryptocurrency SOL barely budged
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The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.
