- The Nasdaq Composite is skyrocketing.
- But Bitcoin is still trailing in the mid-$60,000s.
- Here are four factors holding back the crypto rally.
The Nasdaq Composite is on a tear, having just made its seventh consecutive day of record highs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have enjoyed similar highs, thanks to chipmaker Nvidia and investor frenzy around artificial intelligence.
Bitcoin, however, has failed to tag along.
While market watchers predict the cryptocurrency could surge as high as $200,000 over the next year, it has held steady at around $65,000 for the past week.
Here are four factors holding back the top cryptocurrency.
Digesting the halving
Bitcoin is simply catching its breath after a formidable start to the year, Adam Morgan McCarthy, an analyst at crypto data and analytics firm Kaiko Research, told DL News.
The Nasdaq may have risen 18% this year so far, but Bitcoin is up 53%, McCarthy noted. And it’s not just because Bitcoin tends to be more volatile — they’re simply “moving on different factors.”
“Bitcoin had a very strong start to the year thanks to regulatory developments in the US specifically,” Morgan said. “The next drivers for Bitcoin will be the long-term impact of the latest halving and ETF demand.”
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The fourth halving, which occurred in mid-April, cut in half the amount of Bitcoin that miners receive for maintaining the blockchain. Because less Bitcoin is created, market participants expect the supply shock to push the price upward.
But the halving’s effects “usually take a few months to become apparent,” McCarthy said — and are mostly visible once demand for Bitcoin picks up.
“ETF demand in the US could have a big impact here, as more advisers and firms onboard new investors over the coming months,” McCarthy said.
It’s normal for the quadrennial event to be followed by months of subdued trading, concurred Jacob Joseph, research analyst at CCData. Especially since markets overheated in the months leading up to the halving.
Centralised exchanges recorded new all-time high volumes in March, and that speculation, as indicated by open interest, “was at unprecedented levels,” Joseph told DL News.
Open interest is a metric that reflects the total number of futures contracts outstanding. High open interest tends to be due to speculative frenzy.
“In that sense, the market needs the current cooling period or price consolidation before we see the typical rapid price expansion of Bitcoin and other digital assets,” Joseph said.
ETF outflows
Last week was the worst period in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund outflows since March to the tune of $620 million.
“The short-term outflows from the spot Bitcoin ETFs have also contributed to the negative sentiment in the market, adversely affecting the price action of the asset,” Joseph said.
“However, the upcoming launch of Ethereum ETFs, coupled with the recent positive macroeconomic data, suggests that Bitcoin and major crypto assets are likely to soon reverse their trend and aim for new cycle highs.”
Mt. Gox
Once the biggest crypto exchange in the world, Mt. Gox has loomed over the industry since it collapsed in 2014 after being hacked.
The reason? Roughly $9.2 billion worth of Bitcoin has been held up in the bankruptcy, waiting to get paid back to creditors.
Now it looks like those 142,000 Bitcoin could flood the market any time before October 31, Mt. Gox’s final deadline for repayments.
The market could simply be waiting for these redemptions to occur.
“A mass Bitcoin redemption event is unlikely,” David Duong, head of research at crypto exchange Coinbase, recently told DL News. “But concerns around these repayments could still constrain liquidity as market players may avoid deploying new capital amid the uncertainty.”
Miners selling holdings
Bitcoin miners are also putting pressure on the top cryptocurrency’s price.
While the halving constrained the amount of new Bitcoin that mining firms can create and sell, most of these operations still hold formidable Bitcoin reserves.
The sector has dumped roughly $300 million of its Bitcoin reserves since the beginning of the year, according to analytics firm CryptoQuant.
And Marathon Digital, the largest publicly listed US miner, has offloaded more than $92 million in June alone — about 8% of its billion-dollar stash.
Eric Johannsson and Tom Carreras write about markets for DL News. Got a tip about Bitcoin? Reach out at eric@dlnews.com or tcarreras@dlnews.com
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