From last June 17’s $26,500 Bitcoin (BTC) price to July 17 today, the value of the biggest crypto by market cap has only risen around $3,000. That’s something BTC can do in one day alone.
The major crypto has been stagnant, to say the least, and was briefly buoyed by BlackRock’s ETF (exchange-traded fund), a major move by the $10 trillion asset manager which pushed BTC over the $31,000 mark only to subside below the $30K level in less than 24 hours.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accepted BlackRock’s ETF application a day after it acknowledged a similar application by Bitwise. Last Friday, the U.S. regulator said it would also review applications for various funds, including Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, WisdomTree, VanEck, and Invesco Galaxy.
Read: Why is Bitcoin pushing $30k?
This points to SEC’s preparedness to look into creative crypto trades and bodes well for bullish Bitcoin proponents.
A fund that mirrors the value of one or multiple digital tokens and comprises a variety of cryptocurrencies is known as a cryptocurrency ETF.
Putting downward pressure on Bitcoin prices has been SEC’s regulatory probe of Binance and Coinbase exchanges, but next Wednesday’s U.S. inflation report for last June is also helping maintain a price status quo. Typically, a low inflation report is a good sign for crypto prices while a need to increase interest rates to battle inflation is the contrary.
Economists are forecasting the headline year-on-year CPI, a measure of the index for all items less food and energy, is likely to have cooled to 3.1 percent in June from May’s 4 percent.
Current appetite for Bitcoin
Crypto analytics firm Glassnode revealed that a record amount of BTCs were traded near the current price, a buyer behavior that suggests significant demand for Bitcoin today.
“In this calculation, we discard coin movements between addresses controlled by the same entity, as such transfers do not correspond to real purchasing events and would distort the actual mean purchasing price. Further, we exclude all supply that is on exchanges, because a single averaged price for the funds of millions of users would be misleading and give rise to unwanted artifacts in the data,” Glassnode’s explainer confirms.
Nearly 4 percent of the total BTC supply last moved at just over $30,000 more than when the crypto was priced at $16,500 in 2022, immediately post the FTX collapse.
Halving rally
Bitcoin could see a major price boost at next year’s Spring halving event.
The halving event occurs every four years and is part of helping BTCs become a store of value by limiting the mining (or printing) of coins, as no new bitcoins will be released after the 21-million coin limit is reached.
The event will reduce miners’ rewards by half. Currently, rewards are 6.25 BTC per block ($187,000) and in April 2024 they will be reduced to 3.125 BTC per block.
Halving has historically been seen as having a positive effect on the Bitcoin price.
This will happen at the expense of BTC miners. With less of an incentive to mine cryptos, there will be less supply on the market and this means more demand, helping inflate prices.
Based on a global average cost of electricity of $0.05/kWh, it costs around $20,000 to mine a Bitcoin.
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