Welcome to the weekly Bitcoin market report, our look at bitcoin’s price action and fundamentals. For the last few weeks BTC has seen low volatility, moving within a constrained range just above USD $9000. While traders and investors wait for bitcoin’s next moves, price stability speaks to asset maturation and currency reliability. Where does it go from here? One trader sees a pull back in the short term before another climb.
Here’s your market snapshot:
Bitcoin price movements
- Current Bitcoin price: USD $9370, up ~1% from last week (USD $9236)
- 24hr high: USD $9441
- 24hr low: USD $9148
- 24hr change: +2%
- 24 BTC volume sits around USD $18 billion, down 5% from last week (USD $19 billion)
- 30 day high / low: USD $9,680 / $8,975
- 90 day high / low: USD $10,199 / $7,081
- Bitcoin Volatility Index (BVI), 30day: 0.682, down 20% from last week (0.864)
- Hashrate: 115.91 EH/s, down 6.7% from last week (124.29 EH/s — read more about hashrate)
- S&P: 3272, up ~2% over last week at 3194
- SPX-BTC 90d correlation: 0.21, up 10% over last week (0.19)
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BTC Price Consolidation
Over the past week, the price of Bitcoin has barely moved, losing just 1%. In fact, for the last three weeks the price has remained fairly steady, stabilizing within the USD $9000 – $9500 range. BTC 24 hour volume has been steadily decreasing since the beginning of May, also about the time when the price began to consolidate towards USD $9200, where we’ve seen it sit since July 8th 2020. Today 24 hour volume is down 80% from the 2020 high of USD $69.5 billion on March 13th.
Price stabilization
As the price has shed volatility over the past few months and Bitcoin markets have stabilized around $9200, expectations have shifted. Large swings are not as expected as they once were, and volatility tends to shock the market.
Volatility is relative, based on the analyzed time period and comparative assets. For bitcoin, correlation to the S&P has remained steady at about 0.2 since mid June. Since then, the S&P has also remained relatively stable at the 3000 – 3200 range. We wrote about BTC-SPX correlation in our last Bitcoin Moves report.
While this has given rise to fresh trader interest in ‘altcoins,’ it also points to a maturing asset that can be used more viably, and with greater regularity, as an alternative to fiat currency. Ever since bitcoin gained attention from traditional finance, institutions and investors have claimed that the asset is “too volatile” to be an investment or used as currency.
While low volatility typically correlates with lower trading volumes, looking at the bigger picture for Bitcoin’s viability and acceptance, low volatility is a positive thing.
Will BTC decline?
According to Skew, 10 day realized volatility is 16%, meaning a movement of less than 1% up or down over the last ten days. The last time this happened was November 2018, with bitcoin selling off nearly 50% afterwards.
Some investors are saying we’re about to reach a floor, with a bearish lower limit of $7200; crypto trader and BraveNewCoin contributor Josh Olszewicz predicts that bitcoin may fall ~21% in the coming weeks. Today, Into The Block also cites BTC signals as bearish. However, Josh notes that over the next few months “bitcoin may reach new highs swiftly as quantitative easing and global central bank money printing surge to unparalleled levels.”
We recently published a blog post providing a summary and live links of the top bitcoin price indicators and network metrics that traders need to know.
Bitcoin in the news
Bitcoin matures
As reported by Cointelegraph, Grayscale and Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert said in a recent investor call that “for the first time ever, we are past the ‘ban bitcoin’ perceived risk. There’s enough support in DC from policy makers and regulators that Bitcoin has a right to exist and ultimately you can’t shut it down.” As a cryptocurrency exchange regulated across the United States, and internationally, we would agree.
As bitcoin has matured, institutional interest has also increased. Grayscale themselves have massively increased their bitcoin holdings as part of their Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), purchasing bitcoin faster than they can be mined. Near the end of May, we explained where new institutional market interest is coming from in our Impact of the Third Bitcoin Halving post.
In other news
GPT-3
Over the weekend GPT-3 made a splash on Twitter as select folks were given access to OpenAI’s latest version of their language AI. Samples of GPT-3 generated writing began circulating and Manual Araoz’s popular blog post, OpenAI’s GPT-3 May Be the Biggest Thing Since Bitcoin, explained what happened when he posted to the bitcointalk.org forum.
Nathaniel Whittemore provided a high level look at GPT-3 and its impact in his July 20th Breakdown podcast.
Last thought
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