Today’s headlines:
- Trump appoints Bo Hines to head crypto council.
- MARKETS: Exploring six on-chain indicators to understand the Bitcoin cycle.
- Michael Saylor publishes a Bitcoin Plan for Upcoming US Administration.
- Microstrategy names Brian Brooks, former Binance.US CEO to board of directors
- Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM.
Bitcoin has been trending down below $100,000 over the past few days as this key psychological area continues to act as strong resistance.
Over the past month Bitcoin has ranged between $92,000 and $108,000 as any attempts to convincingly break above $100,000 have been sold off each time.
$BTC is now effectively at the same level is was a month ago, currently down just -2.55% in the past 30 days.
Figure 1: Attempts to stay above $100,000 have been sold off.
As we approach year-end, even though recent price action may appear a little frustrating, it has been a strong year for the orange coin. $BTC is up +121% since this time last year.
Much of that gain appeared in February - March with excitement around the spot ETF launches and in November with excitement around the Trump presidential victory.
Figure 2: Bitcoin ‘up only’ performance over the past 3 months.
The Big Story
Strong selling AND buying
The struggle to break $100k is a real challenge for Bitcoin at the moment.
Why? Because as well as a lot of buying, notably through ETFs, there’s also a lot of selling from long-term holders.
You might hear people on crypto twitter scream HODL, but the data shows otherwise.
Since Trump’s election victory there has been a consistent downtrend in the Bitcoin +1yr HODL wave. This tells us that bitcoins that had not moved onchain for at least a year, have now been moving…most likely to be sold.
Figure 3: Long term holders selling since the Trump election victory.
Despite this consistent level of selling from long-term holders, $BTC has continued to range from the low $90,000’s up to $108,000.
A major reason for this is due to the strong buying we have seen come in, particularly from the most popular Bitcoin spot ETFs like the Blackrock IBIT ETF. Even as Bitcoin has ranged over the past month, there have continued to be strong inflows into this particular ETF on most days.
Friday last week was a rare exception with outflows of -$72M.
Figure 4: BlackRock’s IBIT has had very few red days of outflows.
The result of this battle between buyers and sellers is that the month of December is shaping up to be flat. Currently shown in amber on the Monthly Returns Heatmap below with a percentage performance of just +0.71%.
Figure 5: Lacklustre performance in December 2024 for Bitcoin
Key Chart
Addresses Holding > X BTC by Year
Figure 6: Growth of Bitcoin addresses over time.
This chart shows growth in the number of addresses that hold at least 0.01, 0.1, and 1 BTC by year. Over time there is a clear increase in the number of addresses for each segment as Bitcoin has become adopted by more people around the world.
An interesting point to note is that this years numbers appear to be slightly down on last years. A major driver of this is likely to be the introduction of ETFs where a much smaller number of addresses hold a lot of bitcoin for many investors.
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Thank you for being with us on Substack during 2024. All of us here at Bitcoin Magazine Pro hope that you enjoy the Holiday Season. We are looking forward to an exciting 2025 for Bitcoin!
The Bitcoin Magazine Pro Team.