Bitcoin’s market structure has entered the Seven Seas, and on-chain analysis limits the scope of the ebbs and flows contributing to BTC's price discovery.
This thread explains why exch. balances and supply age understates the liquid supply following the financialization of BTC.
236,237 BTC.
That’s the amount of known selling of bitcoin since May 10th by large institutions. Most of the selling is related to forced selling, and some is not.
The BTC capacity in lightning is growing at a blistering rate!⚡️
1,100-1,200 BTC: 39 days
1,200-1,300 BTC: 34 days
1,300-1,400 BTC: 19 days
1,400-1,500 BTC: 13 days
1,500-1,600 BTC: 9 days
1,600-1,700 BTC: 15 days
1,700-1,800 BTC: 5 days
@ArcaneResearch
The market is wrong - and dramatically underestimates the impact of U.S. BTC ETFs (and ETH futures-based ETFs).
It's a relatively simple exercise to elaborate on my view:
1. Odds for U.S. spot ETF approval have never been better
2. BTC is trading at pre-BlackRock announcement
Aker just became the first major company in Scandinavia to allocate capital to bitcoin.
The company has invested 500 million NOK (~$60m) to purchase 1170 BTC (avg purchase price ~$51 290).
Find the shareholder letter at
@Seetee_io
Did you know?
Liquidation data from exchanges are bogus and a vast underrepresentation of actual liquidation volumes in the market.
To provide a “fair trading environment” (Bybit, Sep 2021) and to “optimize user data stream” (Binance, Apr 2021), Binance and Bybit changed their
We just wrapped our year-end report, summarizing the year through charts and short text snippets. It's available for all to read here.
The following tweets contain some of the most interesting charts from this year-in-review report.
Institutional traders are back, but not in the 2020 way.
All data suggests that CME traders are shorting BTC heavily.
- Discount to spot at ATH
- 1-year high trading volumes
- Massive growth in open interest
- Futures term structure in backwardation
Binance really pushing to secure its dominance.
Binance's spot volume dominance has risen from 50-60% to 80-90% of the market after fee removal.
Additionally, Binance accounts for 40% of perp open interest (ETH + BTC).
FTX OI dom has fallen from 25% to 14%. From 2nd to 4th.
CME is very long. ATH OI, massive premiums.
BTCs next month contract has only traded on wider premiums vs. its front month contract on three occasions since its launch.
Feb 16, 2020. Dec 23, 2020. Feb 25, 2020.
ETHs next month premium has only been greater once, Mar 18, 2021.
What a year 2020 has been for
@Grayscale
.
Grayscale's AuM has increased from $2.3 billion (Jan 13th) to $12.1 billion (Dec 12th). That's a growth in AuM of 430% in 11 months.
Chapeau
@BarrySilbert
!
The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (NBIM) indirectly owns 2,446 BTC, an increase of 938 BTC from December 31, 2023.
The growth likely originates from pre-determined algo-based sector weighting and risk diversification. It's unlikely to stem from an intentional choice to amass
We are rapidly approaching some very important dates in the bitcoin ETF landscape!
Several spot-based ETF filings will receive the final SEC verdict in a couple of months, while the futures-based ETFs will get their first SEC response in October.
BTC denominated open interest in BTC perpetuals surpassed November highs today with the leverage accumulating on neutral to slightly below neutral funding rates.
Seems explosive tbh
There we have it! The new nine have amassed more than 200k BTC.
Second-strongest daily U.S. spot flow since launch yesterday.
Since launch, the total net inflow to U.S. spot ETFs sits at a massive 51,134 BTC.
With the growing Kimchi premium, I did some digging on the BTC performance following previous spikes in the Korean BTC pair.
While it's impossible to say whether the Kimchi premium has peaked or if it will continue growing onwards, it makes me worried.
According to 13F reporting, 937 professional firms were invested in U.S. spot ETFs as of March 31. In comparison, gold ETFs had 95 professional firms invested in their first quarter (Bitwise).
Retail owns a majority of the float. Professional investors held exposure of $11.06bn
Delta-neutral funds are not the primary driver of ETF flows, and even if that were the case, the net impact on the market would be the same.
Why?
If flows are directional:
Bitcoin is absorbed from the spot market. This demand impulse drags prices higher.
If flows are
This weekend was a proper deleveraging.
Notional OI in BTC perps has declined by 11% to yearly lows.
The shakeout in altcoins was even wilder. By using Tradingview's TOTAL2 index as a notional proxy, relative altcoin OI has plunged to lows not seen since Feb 2023!
Bitcoin's relationship to the VIX index suggests that in the short run, bitcoin clearly behaves like a risk-on asset.
This trend emerged post-COVID and accelerated in 2021.
@WClementeIII
MicroStrategy's impact last week was prob. highly negligible.
MSTR purchased these BTC between April 28 and June 27 (per the last filing), and the avg price is spot on with the vwap from May-June, a period where the U.S. market hour volume dominance ranged from 35-45%.
Very frothy conditions right now.
Funding rates are at 3 year highs, while notional OI is up 23,000 BTC over the past 6 days.
Fairly certain that we'll see ATHs relatively soon, but also fairly certain that we'll see downside vol and cascading long liquidations ahead of ATH.
The entire sell-off since April has occurred during U.S. trading hours.
The cumulative YTD return of BTC during U.S. trading hours has plunged from 4.22% on April 1st to -32.55% today.
During Euro and Asian trading hours, BTC has seen flat returns since Apr 1st.
Market conditions are looking ripe for a short squeeze.
BTC perps notional open interest has jumped by 30k BTC since August 13, with consistent negative funding rates.
Average weekly funding rates have hit their deepest negative since March '23.
The BTC deposits at major exchanges has fallen by more than 560,000 BTC (19%) since March 15th.
The aggregated exchange balance has just fallen below 2.4 million BTC for the first time since August 2018.
Data:
@Glassnode
Monthly average funding rates are negative for the fifth time since January 2020.
Three of four past events have seen funding rates hover in negative terrain for 1.5-2 months.
The October 6, 2020, outlier stems from a brief but big reaction to BitMEX's CFTC and DOJ charges.
The morning coffee tasted particularly good today!
Headline of Finansavisen where I stated that the Norwegian Oil Fund should consider direct bitcoin exposure.
Make sure to check out by
@torkelrogstad
to stay up to date on NBIM's current BTC exposure.
Relatively safe to say that certain exchanges dope their data.
MEXC and Bitget are the two most obvious examples of suspect open interest and volume compared to exchange reserves, but also, Bybit differs from the bunch.
Do not trust all data from data aggregators, folks.
Q4 looks so solid
- Global easing (good for bitcoin)
- Spot ETF options, a new inflow wave (good for bitcoin)
- Seasonality (historically a good period for bitcoin)
- FTX repayments? (good for bitcoin)
- Election ("Binary", Trump rally, Kamala status quo)
- Summer sale done.
Global liquidity and the FNCI point in favorable directions, a solid setup for Q4.
PBOC’s stimulus package yesterday and the Fed’s cutting cycle point toward improved global liquidity conditions.
Additionally, looser-than-average conditions tend to see BTC strength.
Bitcoin ETPs globally currently hold 864,719 BTC.
That's equal to 4.4% of BTC's circulating supply and roughly 45% of the size of crypto exchange reserves.
ETFs are a huge part of Bitcoin's market structure, impacting both spot markets and the CME - and its relevancy is due to
Very bullish action on CME.
CME's basis pushed to yearly highs after seeing the largest relative daily growth in OI since November 9, 2022.
Allocations to the futures ETFs did not cause the growth, as the active market participation share increased from 42% to 51% yesterday.
Shorts are piling in ahead of today's CPI release.
BITI saw its 2nd-largest daily net inflow since launch yesterday, equivalent to daily growth in short exposure of 715 BTC, while BITO saw a quiet day.
Both BITI's and BITO's BTC equivalent exposure reached new ATHs yesterday.
On national TV today, discussing trends in Norwegian crypto ownership.
9% of Norwegian adults own crypto, with 1.5 million crypto owners in the Nordics.
Young adults dominate ownership, with 35% planning to buy crypto in the next 10 years. Bullish!
One million bitcoins are now managed by bitcoin ETFs, ETPs, and trackers worldwide!
This is equivalent to 5.13% of BTC's circulating supply.
These investment vehicles have seen year-to-date net inflows of 161,700 BTC - carried by the massive U.S. ETF launch.
BTC ETFs: Fidelity and SkyBridge verdicts coming shortly. Approval seems unlikely, given the prev. rejections.
Still, pay attention to Fidelity. They've reportedly arranged private meetings with the SEC, in addition to providing PD analysis on BTC, contrary to most other filings
This may be FTX's BitMEX moment. Mex never recovered after the two reputational hits in 2020.
FTX will for sure have a hard time rebuilding its reputation. I view insolvency as highly unlikely, but this ordeal may have a long-lasting impact on FTX's relevancy in crypto derivs.
In less than two months, U.S. spot ETFs have absorbed more supply than the halving will represent in annualized supply issuance reduction.
166,936 BTC net inflow to U.S. spot ETFs since launch!
While the May recovery was strong in ETPs, June has seen even happier days!
The first two days of June have seen gargantuan net inflows to Purpose, 3iQ Coinshares, and BITO, pushing the global BUM to a new all-time high of 205,008 BTC.
Macro and correlations will possibly resume being the key force of the market.
However, the reduced presence of dollar-indebted institutions (i.e. Tesla and miners) might reduce some of the correlation forces.
The current bear market is fairly on track with previous bears.
2014-15, duration to max drawdown: 407 days, -85%
2018, duration to max drawdown: 364 days, -84%
2022, duration to max drawdown: 376 days, -78%
Retail activity on Coinbase stayed low in Q4 2023.
Largest quarterly retail volume since Q2 2022, but still below Q4 2020 and a meager 16% of the Q4 2021 peak.
The growth of the
@Grayscale
Ethereum Trust has been even more impressive.
In January, the ether holdings of the trust sat below 0.5m ETH. Now the holdings of the trust are approaching 3m ETH.
The holdings of ETHE sits at 2.5% of the total circulating ETH supply.
Some stats from the disappointing launch day for futures-based ETH ETFs.
Overall, the shallow flows depict a hollow market and a deficient demand for ETH exposure.
You may argue that futures-based ETFs are inferior to spot ETFs, to which I agree. This, however, does not
The 236,237 BTC number is derived from massive institutional blow-ups and other large known selling seen in the last two months.
The number does not account for other natural capitulation and hedging activity that usually occurs during crypto bear markets.
Grayscale's recent surge in outflows
TLDR: most recent GBTC outflows are likely net neutral for the market, and GBTC outflows are due to decline next week.
Grayscale outflows have accelerated in the past week, coinciding with Gemini Earn announcing a settlement in principle
All major crypto lending platform undergoes a massive stress test at the moment, but assessing the severity of the ongoing bank run and pace of withdrawals is difficult due to a general lack of transparency.
I've done some exploring!🧵
Intraday correlations (last 3.5 weeks)
1. Markets are clearly more correlated during U.S. market hours.
2. Correlations were actually lower than the last 3.5 weeks avg today until the presser
3. Correlations were far higher during the CPI release (Oct 13)
This thread has a lot of charts.
How does the Nov 10th $69,000 peak compare to the $64,899 peak of April 14th?
Tl;dr, Bitcoin seemed vastly more frothy in April than it did on Nov 10. I'd be surprised if $69,000 ends up as the peak of this bull run.
The Wind of Change - a thread
The last three years in bitcoin have been eventful, to put it mildly. The hype of Q4 2017 was unsustainable, and it was followed by a protracted bear market.
I tend to lean in favor of forced selling and contagion-related uncertainty being done for now.
We will likely slump, pump, and dump in choppy conditions in the coming period.
OI up 36,000 BTC (10%) in the past two days, and CME grew the most (19%) after Easter.
Increased participation from active market participants (from 40% to 47%) is the primary driver.
BITO inflows also help. BITO's BTC equivalent exposure surpassed 35,000 BTC yesterday - ATH.
CME Open Interest reached new notional all-time highs yesterday of 172,430 BTC!
The prevailing institutional bias is building long exposure. Alongside the wild surge in open interest, futures premiums have climbed to 5-month highs.
April saw record-breaking monthly net outflows of 14,327 BTC from BTC ETPs, surpassing the previous monthly outflow record from July 2021, further illustrating the sad state of the market this month.
Massive surge in perp OI today (+11%)!!
This is the second-largest daily spike towards the upside in the last year, May 29th, 2021, which saw a 13% spike. July 20th, 2021, +9%.
CME since Mar 3:
Falling OI, falling basis, excess volume amidst Friday crash
CME's OI has fallen to a four-month low, and the active market participant share currently sits at an all-time low of 35%.
Non-ETF-related OI currently sits at 22,360 BTC - lowest since May 5, 2022.
January 18
U.S. ETFs saw their strongest net inflows since to date yesterday of 10,570 BTC. U.S. BTC Spot ETFs now hold 650,000 BTC - similar to GBTC's exposure at its March 2021 peak.
The nine newborn ETFs now hold 69k BTC - Nice!
It all started with Do Kwon.
As LFG reached its initial $3bn BTC reserves target, it took 5 days before UST’s peg was in shambles, and the 80k BTC reserve was deployed in a desperate attempt to save the peg.
Luna collapsed, leading to contagion and more sell-side pressure.
Monthly cyclicality and push and pull factors in bitcoin?
Coincidence or not, more or less all bitcoin strength since January 2021 has been seen in the first two weeks of the month.
80,000 LFG bitcoins were absorbed in the market last week, ouuufff.
Now that LFGs BTC reserves no longer represent a structural risk, we can finally return to the frustrating experience of looking at the correlations between bitcoin, the QQQ, and the SPX!
Website traffic data confirms that retail is gradually returning to the market
90-day website traffic to crypto exchanges has increased 45% from the Aug-Oct figures
Similarly, website traffic to CMC and CoinGecko is up 66%
Still, both are well behind the summer of 2022
Institutional ownership of BTC ETFs grew solidly in Q2!
According to 13F filings, 1,199 professional firms held investments in U.S. spot ETFs as of June 30, marking an increase of 262 firms over the quarter.
While retail investors still hold the majority of the float,
Bitcoin outperformed both the S&P 500 and gold this year as well.
Gold seeing negative YTD returns in a year where the 12-month CPI growth reached its highest level in 39 years really is a sight to behold.
These nine charts slap. 3.5 years of memorabilia.
OI has fallen to 411k BTC, reversion towards the mean.
CME and Binance dominance near ATHs.
BitMEX - From 41% to 2%. Huobi same, but different.
OKX's smile.
Deribit, steady as a rock.
The BTC ETP inflows are both massive and steady!
From June 16th to July 16th, BTC ETPs saw monthly net inflows of 25,202 BTC - the second largest monthly net inflow in BTC ETPs, only surpassed by October 2021 (the launch of BITO and other futures-based ETFs in the U.S.).
Moving on.
We estimate that an astronomical $84.45bn (!!!!!!!) worth of longs and $46.89bn worth of shorts have been liquidated in the BTC futures market alone this year.
2021 - The Great Rektoning💀
GBTC has officially halved ahead of the halving.
Grayscale has seen net outflows of 310,611 BTC in the 66 trading days since its conversion. That's a 50.16% reduction in Bitcoins Under Management since January 10.
VolatilityShares now holds a larger BTC equivalent exposure than BITO.
This is remarkable. BITO has been "the only" relevant futures-based player in town, enjoying its first-mover advantage.
Now, BITX is enjoying a similar privilege in the leveraged ETF scene.
Vertical flows!
The seriously boring market over the summer and poor momentum of late have crushed the sentiment.
Given the very constructive ETF developments, I am still surprised to find my current view rather contrarian.
Further, keep in mind that we're half a year from BTC's halving and a
The BTC exposure of the BTC ETPs is currently on a path towards November highs, indicating a growing demand for BTC exposure through traditional investment vehicles.
Growth is particularly strong in BITO, Purpose, and Galaxy.
Data:
@ByteTree
The flows over the past few days have been wild!
We have seen a new all-time high 3-day inflow to BTC investment vehicles globally of 34,230 BTC.
Leading to an all-time high BTC investment vehicle exposure of 911,543 BTC.
BITI is now the second-largest U.S. exchange-traded bitcoin fund after an inflow equivalent of 544.2 BTC yesterday.
I.e, three days after launch, the short BTC ETF has already surpassed Valkyrie (840 BUM) and VanEck (830 BUM).
Send it!
Markets soured, and public miners were pressured to initiate the selling of their precious BTC holdings in May.
Public BTC miners sold 4,456 BTC in May.
Miners have started to dump their
#bitcoin
holdings.
Public miners sold more than 100% of their production in May, a massive increase from the usual 25-40%.
BlackRock surpassed Grayscale yesterday, and is now the largest BTC ETF, holding 288,671 BTC.
IBIT needed only 96 trading days to close GBTC's huge lead.
So, where are we now? The last 2 months have been an obvious capitulation.
Most of the selling of the 236,237 BTC mentioned in this thread has been forced selling, and it’s likely been worse than what this thread covers with underwater retail and institutions capitulating.
Futures premiums are rising.
CME's basis sits at 8.7%, the highest since Nov 2021, trading at a premium to offshore futures' 6.3%.
CME also accounts for 68.2% of the BTC futures market, excluding perps. The futures dominance offshore has fallen steadily throughout the year.
Exchange-traded bitcoin investment vehicles now have more than 800,000 BTC under management, equaling 4.3% of the circulating bitcoin supply.
Since New Year's Eve, more than 100,000 BTC have been absorbed by bitcoin funds!
U.S. ETF saw net inflows equivalent to ~17,619 BTC since the launch of spot ETFs.
Make no mistake; last week's flows to new entrants were super solid (+35,227 BTC) - as were outflows from GBTC and futures-based ETFs.
Nonetheless, flows remained positive on a day-to-day basis.
BITX exposure surpasses 50,000 BTC.
VolatilityShares' 2x leveraged long BTC ETF became the first futures-based ETF to cross the + 10,000 CME contract barrier yesterday.
Its AUM sits $333m shy of BITO, and the stage is set for a new top dog in the futures-based ETF cohort.
February 8, 2024 - The strongest daily net inflow to BTC investment vehicles since January 19, 2021!
4.52% of the circulating BTC supply is currently held by investment vehicles.
CME’s November contract trades at an extreme discount to spot.
The current discounts are bigger than those following the March 12, 2020, collapse in BTC, and CME’s futures currently trade at an all-time high discount to spot.
The current market structure closely resembles the market structure exactly one year ago
CME premiums and exposure climb rapidly while funding rates chop around a neutral to below regime
Key differences
1. ETH basis follows BTC
2. Perp OI crash-recovery more aggressive in 2024
1/10 February BTC ETP recap:
- Strong growth overall in ETPs, ending the month at a new all-time high
- Canada, the U.S., and Brazil lead the way, while European ETPs still see net outflows
CFTC's last major push against a leading derivatives exchange: BitMEX
First 13hrs: OI fell by 16%
First day: BitMEX experienced a *MASSIVE* bank run of 27% BTC withdrawn on day 1.
Day 7: BitMEX no longer top dawg in the futures market.
Day 844: BitMEX 2% of market