Cryptocurrencies: Main Week of the Calendar

Last week was marked by another wave of sales. The bitcoin rate approached the June 19 low ($17,600), falling to $18,543 on September 7. At the same time, Ethereum fell below $1,500, an important support/resistance level, and recorded a local bottom at $1,488. This dynamic is primarily due to the hawkish rhetoric of the Fed and, as a result, the strengthening of the US currency. However, later, against the background of the ECB meeting, both coins won back their losses in full, and even seriously increased in quotes. At the time of writing this review, on Friday evening, September 9, they are trading as follows: BTC/USD at $21.275, ETH/USD at $1,715. The total capitalization of the crypto market has risen slightly above the psychologically important level of $1 trillion and is $1.042 trillion ($0.976 trillion a week ago). The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has fallen by another 3 points in seven days from 25 to 22 and is in the Extreme Fear zone.

According to the TradingView service, the ratio of ethereum to bitcoin has grown to its highest values for 2022. It was fixed at 0.0843 in the afternoon of September 06. The last time such a level was noted was in December 2021. 1 BTC is worth about 12.4 ETH at current values.

The ETH community has linked the growth of this indicator to the upcoming network merger. Many users have been talking for almost a year now that a revolution will happen in this tandem sooner or later. Then ethereum will overtake bitcoin in terms of capitalization and value. Recall that the update of the ethereum network is scheduled for the period from September 13 to 20. This merge is likely to be the most important event of 2022 in the cryptocurrency industry. This is because it will bring several key changes to how the network works. The main ones are a 99.99% reduction in energy consumption and a decrease in the emission of the ETH coin.

According to a number of experts, if the transition to the Ethereum 2.0 network and the implementation of the Proof-of-Stake mechanism go as planned, this altcoin can rise sharply in price and pull the entire market up with it, primarily its main competitor, bitcoin. But that's if everything goes smoothly and according to plan. Or maybe not. So, it became known on Wednesday, September 07 that the ethereum network encountered a problem after the Bellatrix update. The blockchain is seeing a noticeable spike in “number of missed blocks,” the frequency with which the network fails to process blocks of transactions scheduled for validation. This figure has increased by about 1700%. Before the update, it was about 0.5%, and after the Bellatrix it rose to 9%.

CoinShares Chief Strategy Officer Meltem Demirors believes that investors are ignoring the general situation in the market, amid the hype around the transition of ETH to the PoS mechanism. And that, despite the benefits of the merger for the ethereum network itself, it is not certain that this event will attract significant investment capital: “While there is significant enthusiasm in the crypto community for a merger that can rapidly reduce supply and increase demand, the reality is more prosaic: investors are concerned about rates and macro indicators. I believe that significant amounts of new capital are unlikely to enter ETH. There are certain risks that need to be played out in the market because the merger has been used as an excuse to buy on the rumor and sell on the news. How will these risks be played out? Most likely on the institutional side or through trading, but through options rather than outright purchases of the asset.”

Experts of u.today portal also remind about macro statistics. They note that September 13 could be an important date, not only because of the merger of the ethereum networks. There is one more factor. As we wrote above, fresh data from the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) will be published on the same day. According to analysts, this information will help investors understand what is happening with the inflation rate in the country and will directly affect the financial markets, including cryptocurrency. If the network update does not cause problems with volatility, liquidity and security, and the CPI shows a decrease in inflation, then a bullish momentum can be predicted, otherwise the crypto market will continue to fall.

Glassnode allowed BTC to fall further to support around $17,000. The specialists do not rule out such a wave of capitulation due to an increase in the proportion of "unprofitable" coins at the disposal of speculators (who traded in the previous 155 days). It rose to 96% (3.11 million BTC out of 3.24 million BTC). The situation was aggravated by the suspension of the bearish rally from June 19 to August 15. The rise in the price to $25,000 and its subsequent fall in just a few days transferred half of the speculators' coin reserves to the category of “unprofitable”.

In the short term, it is the stress testing of speculators that will determine the disposition in the market, since most of the on-chain activity was carried out by them. Three such episodes in the current downtrend had led earlier to sales with a short planning horizon and the subsequent formation of a local bottom.

Analyst Kevin Swenson agrees with Glassnode's alarming outlook. He issued a warning about a possible downward movement of bitcoin as well. The US dollar soared to its highest level in 20 years, while bitcoin fell below the diagonal support that kept the asset afloat from its June lows of $17,600, Swanson said. Swanson admits further bearish scenario for bitcoin as the DXY dollar index is still in a strong uptrend. Another expert, Naeem Aslam, believes that the fall will not be to the level of $18,000 or $15,000, but much lower, to about $12,000.

Cryptoanalyst Nicholas Merten does not rule out either that bitcoin will soon collapse to a strong support level in the range of $12,000-14,000. He made this forecast based on the net unrealized profit and loss (NUPL), which shows the state of the positions of BTC holders. (When NUPL is above 0, most investors are in the black. If below 0, then more investors suffer losses).

At the same time, Merten believes that the BTC movement can be unpredictable since the asset has never been traded during a period of tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates. He also doubts the imminent return to quantitative easing (QE) by the US Federal Reserve, as it was in the past. “I would like to note,” the expert writes, “that there has never been a 50% recession, almost depressive correction or a bearish stock market in all 10 years during which BTC has been liquidly traded on exchanges, . There were typical bear markets around 20%, and then the Fed came to the rescue and saved the day. But the Fed cannot do the same now. If you print money and try to save the day, you can seriously exacerbate the problem of inflation.”

And some positive at the end of the review. Despite the fall in the capitalization of the crypto market and the bankruptcy of a number of large projects, the bitcoin hash rate is close to its historical maximum. The situation seems inconsistent with the fall of the main cryptocurrency by more than 70% from the maximum, and the collapse of the shares of public mining companies. However, miners continue to introduce new capacities. Analysts attribute this to the optimism of some companies and the readiness for market turbulence of others. If we add to this the Glassnode data, which observes an increase in the number of coins at the disposal of hodlers, then we can hope that the crypto winter will still be followed by spring.