Market Wrap: Bitcoin Holds Over $19K, Continues Wild Ride

Bitcoin pushed higher on Wednesday, reversing course after a roller coaster day of trading on Tuesday.

The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad-based market index that measures performance across a basket of cryptocurrencies, rose 3%.

Economic Calendar: The U.K.’s central bank took the interest rate stage Thursday, raising its key interest rate by 50 basis points. This marks its seventh consecutive rate hike and pushed U.K. borrowing costs to a 14-year high.

Countries worldwide are in a phase of aggressive monetary tightening policy; the central banks of Canada, Switzerland and the eurozone have recently taken similar actions.

The broader concern is the extent to which restrictive monetary policy suppresses economic output, which is likely to have a negative impact on the prices of risk assets like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

U.S. Equities: Traditional equities declined, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), tech-heavy Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 down 0.4%, 1.4% and 0.8%, respectively.

Commodities: WTI crude oil rose 0.8% while natural gas fell 7%. European Brent crude increased 0.8%, while gasoline (RBOB) rose 1.5%. In metals, traditional safe haven gold rose 0.4%, while copper futures increased 0.09%.

The Dollar Index (DXY) was relatively flat, declining 0.04%.

Bitcoin indicators don’t paint a rosy picture yet

Technical indicators aren’t giving those investors long bitcoin a lot to be excited about.

Bitcoin’s 10-day exponential moving average (EMA) crossed below its 20-day EMA. Measuring the RSI (Relative Strength Index) between the negative candle on Sept. 13 to the negative candle on Sept. 21 implies a bearish confirmation, highlighted by increased volume into the 18% price decline.

“Candle” refers to the representation of an asset’s open, high, low and closing price on a given day. The RSI is a technical indicator that measures price momentum. An increase in negative trading volume following a greater than 10% decrease in price implies that bearish sentiment of an asset remains.

In a bearish confirmation, both price and RSI slope downward in tandem. Should the RSI slope begin to flatten as prices decline, that is an indication that the downturn is weakening.

There are early signs this is occurring, as Thursday’s RSI is up slightly. Its overall value of 40, however, implies that BTC is fairly priced at the moment.

On-chain metrics show that potential room to the downside still exists. The percentage of unique BTC averages in profit has fallen to 52.05%, per blockchain analytics firm Glassnode.

The metric reached a 2022 peak of 82% in March, when BTC was trading near $48,000. The lowest the metric has reached in recent history was 41% in March 2020, when BTC was trading at $5,000. Still, at the current 52% level, it’s beginning to approach the sub-50% range, where BTC would be considered oversold.

The supply of BTC held by addresses with a balance between 1,000 and 10,000 coins has dropped 8% since this February, and 12% since its peak in February 2021. Those coins are likely being absorbed by smaller investors as supplies for addresses holding less than 1,000 BTC have increased over the identical time period.

On a more promising, on-chain note, “Whale Net Volume” on exchanges has turned negative, signaling that addresses that hold 1,000 or more coins are moving coins off centralized exchanges. The significance of this trend is that large deposits onto exchanges often signal that investors are looking to sell bitcoin.

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) is a broad-based index designed to measure the market capitalization weighted performance of the digital asset market subject to minimum trading and exchange eligibility requirements.