There’s still plenty of cool stuff happening in the New Digital World, as this week’s illustrates. But in a bear market, the most crucial barometer to watch is Bitcoin (BTC-USD) – where some rumblings are happening beneath the surface. Let’s take a look.
Check Out the Realized Price
Source: Shutterstock
As we’ve all heard – and likely experienced – BTC took heavy losses when algorithmic stablecoins turned out to be not so stable, with ripple effects across crypto. As mainstream outlets like Fortune reported last Tuesday, the “.”
It’s worth noting that plenty of those investors piled in last year, as an epic wave of “fear of missing out” (FOMO) buyers. And here’s why that’s notable:
On the Bitcoin blockchain, we can gauge the cost basis of all the BTC that’s currently in circulating supply. This “realized price” has “provided sound support during bear markets,” as on-chain analysts at . And as of Monday, BTC investors’ realized price is far below 2021 levels – at $23,940.
When the TerraUSD (UST-USD) stablecoin was collapsing last Wednesday, BTC got within shouting distance of its realized price, falling to $25,835.
Even now, bitcoin’s only about 20% from its realized price – which “has provided signals of market bottom formation when the market price trades below it,” notes Glassnode.
Market bottoms take time, of course, and here’s what bitcoin’s historical trend tells us:
These painful bear markets can last quite a while – a year and 43 days, on average. Yet within that: “Over time, each bear cycle has spent less relative duration below the realized price,” as we saw in the % of Bear column above.
So, clearly that $23,940 realized price will be one to watch going forward. And it aligns with one of the key technical support levels that we’ll see from Luke Lango of our below.
What’s really interesting, though, is that as we approached BTC’s relative price of $23,940…
Buyers Have Started Accumulating Bitcoin
When “a large proportion of the market are adding to their on-chain balances,” Glassnode’s Accumulation Trend Score for the crypto will get close to 1.0.
On Thursday – the very day after BTC hit its low of $25,835 – its Accumulation Trend Score . By Sunday, it was at 0.926! That’s a reading not seen since early April.
And we can even see the bitcoin: mainly investors with wallets holding 10 BTC or less…but also “whales” with more than 10,000 BTC!
This is not accounted for by the exchanges, by the way. Exchange balances may have spiked before this – as Terra (LUNA-USD) dumped its BTC reserves and created a panic that had others offloading their bitcoin, too… However, balances then shrunk significantly since Thursday, May 12 (as the blue line shows us on the chart below):
We also know that wallet ages have only continued to grow. If long-time bitcoiners had abandoned ship and the buyers were all new money, then BTC’s average wallet age would be dropping. Instead, it’s trending higher. The average age is now nearly 3 years, 2 months, as per the blue line below:
So, it could very well be the long-time bitcoiners – who presumably have a much lower cost basis – who are willing to buy BTC down here.
That being said, there is some interest by newbies, as well. As Unchained charts in its age distribution of wallets, the “1 day – 1 week” group makes up 4% of wallets, up from about 2% before all this craziness began last week.
What 抖阴最新版 Institutions?
Many investment funds would fall into the “whale” category of 10,000 BTC or more. And given that Wall Street has only more recently come around on bitcoin…they’d probably also show up as “1 year – 2 year” wallets. This group is also growing on the age distribution chart.
A clearer indicator of institutional activity is the “.” While Binance (BNB-USD) is the largest crypto exchange overall, Coinbase Pro is the one that caters to institutions specifically. So, when BTC prices at Coinbase Pro are higher than on Binance, it suggests that institutions are buying bitcoin.
Earlier in May, the “Coinbase premium” went negative, as Wall Street must have been selling hard. But this week, and prices for BTC are very, very close.
As recently as Monday, various fund managers were that BTC was just another “tradable asset” that institutions were selling. Now, that might be starting to change!
Technicals are Still Iffy, Though
Big money coming in – while long-term investors stay in – is what helps assets climb out of a bear market. But, again, that takes time. And the charts aren’t looking too pretty as BTC doesn’t seem to know if it wants to hold $30,000 or not.
Given that we got down to about $26,000 last week, bitcoin doesn’t even seem to know if it wants to hold the long-term range between about $40,000 (the 2-year moving average) and $22,500 (the 200-week moving average), as Valkyrie Funds highlighted in its . Technical analysts for agree that we could see bitcoin test $22,000.
Luke Lango provides all the key technical support levels to watch in this chart from his update Saturday:
As Luke shows us, below $30,000 the next strongest support level is below $24,000. (An area you’ll remember from the “realized price” analysis showing that the cost basis of circulating BTC is $23,940.) That better hold or we could be heading to $18,000, then $10,000 before this is all over.
Sooner or later, though, bitcoin will be fine. But only the strongest cryptos will hang in there with it. That’s why from now on, Luke and his team’s updates for their will be “heavily emphasizing portfolio consolidation.” To get on the list before they announce their recommendations for the “best of the best” cryptos,
On the date of publication, Ashley Cassell did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines. To have more news from The New Digital World sent to your inbox,
