BTC starts 2022 all over again — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week
The yearly open stays in focus as support as Bitcoin bulls hope for a trip to $50,000 this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week and…
The yearly open stays in focus as support as Bitcoin bulls hope for a trip to $50,000 this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week and a new quarter as if it were starting the new year — at just over $46,000.
In what will seem like some serious deja-vu for hodlers, BTC/USD is at practically the same level it was on Jan. 1, 2022.
Price action has been quiet — too quiet, perhaps — in recent days, but behind the declining volatility, there are signs that the market is busy deciding future direction.
From macro to on-chain, there are in fact plenty of cues to keep an eye on in April, amid a backdrop of Bitcoin — at least so far — retaining its yearly open price as support.
Cointelegraph takes a look at five of these factors as they pertain to BTC price performance over the coming week.
Inflation meets fresh money printing
There has been much talk of the end of the post-COVID “easy money” period and the impact it’ll have on risk assets such as Bitcoin.
As the United States Federal Reserve pledges to reduce its record high balance sheet and keep raising key rates, commentators have sounded the alarm over what could be a shockwave hitting investment into crypto.
So far, however, there is little sign that a fundamental shift is underway, while in Asia this week, it seems like the opposite is true.
As highlighted by markets commentator Holger Zschaepitz, Japan’s central bank, the Bank of Japan (BoJ), has in fact added to its balance sheet but printing even more liquidity.
The BoJ already had the largest balance sheet relative to GDP, and that trend is only increasing, now at 136% of GDP.
For Zschaepitz, this is not only a surprise, but could be “the biggest monetary experiment in history.”
“In comparison, the ECB and the Fed look like amateurs,” he argued.
If more printing means more good times for risk assets, meanwhile, not everyone is even convinced that the long-vaunted balance sheet reductions will last. Central banks, they claim, will soon have no choice but to restart liquidity injections.
“There is no government, ever, that resisted the temptation to print money in order to pay its bills and placate its citizens. The government will never voluntarily go bankrupt. This is axiomatic. I challenge you to contradict me with evidence,” Arthur Hayes, ex-CEO of derivatives giant BitMEX, wrote in a blog post in March.
“Therefore, if your time horizon is in the years, it’s time. If you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Remember: it’s not gold or Bitcoin that is increasing in price, it’s a decrease in value of the fiat currency in which they are priced.”
The contrasting view, as signaled by last week’s yield curve inversion, pits rate hikes against the now high risk of a recession in the U.S. — a combination that should pressure Bitcoin and stocks alike.
Spot bulls aim for $50,000
The lack of volatility is the main talking point among Bitcoin traders and analysts as Monday gets underway.
Some classic but brief excitement around the weekly close faded within hours, with bears still failing to take the yearly open away as support, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows.
With that, BTC/USD is in exactly the same place as it was three months ago, but short-term price signals are already seeing some calling for continuation higher.
Among them is popular analyst TechDev, who highlighted Bitcoin’s first “volatility squeeze” since January playing out on the 12-hour chart.
12H $BTC volatility squeeze forming.
— TechDev (@TechDev_52) April 4, 2022
First since January. This one is during green trend bars.
Breakout arrow will indicate direction when it occurs. pic.twitter.com/5QZDl92p7f
TechDev used indicators including the Bollinger Bands volatility measure, which is now seeing BTC/USD surfing the middle of the channel with a skew to the upside.
As Cointelegraph reported, the odds are already on for an attack on the $50,000 mark, which will be Bitcoin’s first this year.
April itself, meanwhile, has much to live up to — in and of itself, this month has historically been “good” for Bitcoin.
Buyers usher coins out of exchanges in March
It’s no secret that a lot of Bitcoin has been leaving exchanges this year, but the latest data shows just how the supply squeeze is playing out.
According to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, last month saw exchange outflows unlike many others — exchanges are down by the equivalent of almost 100,000 BTC.
Historically, there have only been two occasions in Bitcoin’s lifespan when outflows surpass the 100,000 BTC mark, making March’s among the highest.
“Aggregate exchange outflows of this magnitude have only been seen on a handful of occasions through history, with most being after the March 2020 liquidity crisis,” Glassnode added in Twitter comments alongside an annotated chart.
Should investors be recreating the bottom-buying behavior from after the COVID-19 crash, the implications should be clear, but may take a while to play out. In 2020, while BTC/USD rebounded after dropping 60% in days, it wasn’t until Q4 that price performance really began to change.
Fellow analytics platform CryptoQuant, which tracks the balances of 21 major exchanges, meanwhile shows that overall BTC stocks are now at their lowest since Aug. 1, 2018 — 2.303 million BTC.
A meandering downtrend in 2022 gathered pace in March, which saw a total of 77,000 BTC withdrawn to private wallets.
Never mind the altseason
An unusual event has occurred when it comes to Bitcoin’s relationship with altcoins — combined open interest and volume on altcoin derivatives markets has surpassed that of Bitcoin for the first time in over a year.
The move was noticed by crypto analytics platform Coinalyze, which openly suggested that the much-fabled “altseason” may now be here.
#ALTSEASON ? pic.twitter.com/O0rv3ttwMl
— Coinalyze (@coinalyzetool) March 31, 2022
“Could mean altseason, money flows into alts now,” founder Gabriel Dodan told Cointelegraph in private comments.
Such a perspective chimes with data showing considerable inflows into altcoins last week, which one commentator argued showed risk appetite among investors increasing.
Taking the limelight away from BTC may not be a dampener on performance per se, Dodan meanwhile added, thanks to volatility similarly draining away.
“On the other hand that makes BTC pretty stable because it is not over leveraged; it's a good floor for BTC,” he explained.
Hash rate hits new all-time high
Hot on the heels of record difficulty for the Bitcoin network, hash rate has hit new all-time highs.
Related: Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, VET, THETA, RUNE, AAVE
In what shows miners’ belief in the long-term profitability of participating in the network, hash rate is now at 223 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to data resource MiningPoolStats.
While only an estimate of the processing power dedicated by miners, hash rate has never been higher, and according to proponents, will continue to grow regardless of external attempts to “reign in” Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin mining is pretty much the most anti fragile system designed by man,” Francis Pouliot, CEO of payment processor Bull Bitcoin, argued in a well-known blog post about Bitcoin hash rate and energy consumption last year.
“Any attack on Bitcoin is guaranteed to make Bitcoin stronger, which itself implies a higher price, a higher hashrate, and higher energy consumption.”
The topic of Bitcoin versus energy remains highly controversial, with multiple popular figures taking pains to explain what they see as a logical fallacy — that Bitcoin uses “too much.” Bitcoin does not waste energy, they contend, but merely converts it into something more useful as the most sound money ever created.
Hash rate, regardless of the narrative, meanwhile continues to grow, underscoring the basic bullish premise for investing in Bitcoin.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
yield curve covid-19 stocks bitcoin crypto btc crypto goldGovernment
Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19
Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19
A new survey reveals that only 20% of Americans view covid-19 as "a major threat"…
A new survey reveals that only 20% of Americans view covid-19 as "a major threat" to the health of the US population - a sharp decline from a high of 67% in July 2020.
What's more, the Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that just 10% of Americans are concerned that they will catch the disease and require hospitalization.
"This data represents a low ebb of public concern about the virus that reached its height in the summer and fall of 2020, when as many as two-thirds of Americans viewed COVID-19 as a major threat to public health," reads the report, which was published March 7.
According to the survey, half of the participants understand the significance of researchers and healthcare providers in understanding and treating long COVID - however 27% of participants consider this issue less important, while 22% of Americans are unaware of long COVID.
What's more, while Democrats were far more worried than Republicans in the past, that gap has narrowed significantly.
"In the pandemic’s first year, Democrats were routinely about 40 points more likely than Republicans to view the coronavirus as a major threat to the health of the U.S. population. This gap has waned as overall levels of concern have fallen," reads the report.
More via the Epoch Times;
The survey found that three in ten Democrats under 50 have received an updated COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 66 percent of Democrats ages 65 and older.
Moreover, 66 percent of Democrats ages 65 and older have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, while only 24 percent of Republicans ages 65 and older have done so.
“This 42-point partisan gap is much wider now than at other points since the start of the outbreak. For instance, in August 2021, 93 percent of older Democrats and 78 percent of older Republicans said they had received all the shots needed to be fully vaccinated (a 15-point gap),” it noted.
COVID-19 No Longer an Emergency
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued its updated recommendations for the virus, which no longer require people to stay home for five days after testing positive for COVID-19.
The updated guidance recommends that people who contracted a respiratory virus stay home, and they can resume normal activities when their symptoms improve overall and their fever subsides for 24 hours without medication.
“We still must use the commonsense solutions we know work to protect ourselves and others from serious illness from respiratory viruses, this includes vaccination, treatment, and staying home when we get sick,” CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement.
The CDC said that while the virus remains a threat, it is now less likely to cause severe illness because of widespread immunity and improved tools to prevent and treat the disease.
“Importantly, states and countries that have already adjusted recommended isolation times have not seen increased hospitalizations or deaths related to COVID-19,” it stated.
The federal government suspended its free at-home COVID-19 test program on March 8, according to a website set up by the government, following a decrease in COVID-19-related hospitalizations.
According to the CDC, hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and influenza diseases remain “elevated” but are decreasing in some parts of the United States.
International
Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run – Musk Says “I Would Support”
Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run – Musk Says "I Would Support"
Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Friday hinted that he may jump…
Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Friday hinted that he may jump into the race to become the next Senate GOP leader, and Elon Musk was quick to support the idea. Republicans must find a successor for periodically malfunctioning Mitch McConnell, who recently announced he'll step down in November, though intending to keep his Senate seat until his term ends in January 2027, when he'd be within weeks of turning 86.
So far, the announced field consists of two quintessential establishment types: John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota. While John Barrasso's name had been thrown around as one of "The Three Johns" considered top contenders, the Wyoming senator on Tuesday said he'll instead seek the number two slot as party whip.
Paul used X to tease his potential bid for the position which -- if the GOP takes back the upper chamber in November -- could graduate from Minority Leader to Majority Leader. He started by telling his 5.1 million followers he'd had lots of people asking him about his interest in running...
Thousands of people have been asking if I'd run for Senate leadership...
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 8, 2024
...then followed up with a poll in which he predictably annihilated Cornyn and Thune, taking a 96% share as of Friday night, with the other two below 2% each.
????????️VOTE NOW ????️ ???? Who would you like to be the next Senate leader?
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 8, 2024
Elon Musk was quick to back the idea of Paul as GOP leader, while daring Cornyn and Thune to follow Paul's lead by throwing their names out for consideration by the Twitter-verse X-verse.
I would support Rand Paul and suspect that other candidates will not actually run polls out of concern for the results, but let’s see if they will!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 8, 2024
Paul has been a stalwart opponent of security-state mass surveillance, foreign interventionism -- to include shoveling billions of dollars into the proxy war in Ukraine -- and out-of-control spending in general. He demonstrated the latter passion on the Senate floor this week as he ridiculed the latest kick-the-can spending package:
This bill is an insult to the American people. The earmarks are all the wasteful spending that you could ever hope to see, and it should be defeated. Read more: https://t.co/Jt8K5iucA4 pic.twitter.com/I5okd4QgDg
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 8, 2024
In February, Paul used Senate rules to force his colleagues into a grueling Super Bowl weekend of votes, as he worked to derail a $95 billion foreign aid bill. "I think we should stay here as long as it takes,” said Paul. “If it takes a week or a month, I’ll force them to stay here to discuss why they think the border of Ukraine is more important than the US border.”
Don't expect a Majority Leader Paul to ditch the filibuster -- he's been a hardy user of the legislative delay tactic. In 2013, he spoke for 13 hours to fight the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director. In 2015, he orated for 10-and-a-half-hours to oppose extension of the Patriot Act.
Among the general public, Paul is probably best known as Capitol Hill's chief tormentor of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease during the Covid-19 pandemic. Paul says the evidence indicates the virus emerged from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. He's accused Fauci and other members of the US government public health apparatus of evading questions about their funding of the Chinese lab's "gain of function" research, which takes natural viruses and morphs them into something more dangerous. Paul has pointedly said that Fauci committed perjury in congressional hearings and that he belongs in jail "without question."
Musk is neither the only nor the first noteworthy figure to back Paul for party leader. Just hours after McConnell announced his upcoming step-down from leadership, independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr voiced his support:
Mitch McConnell, who has served in the Senate for almost 40 years, announced he'll step down this November.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 28, 2024
Part of public service is about knowing when to usher in a new generation. It’s time to promote leaders in Washington, DC who won’t kowtow to the military contractors or…
In a testament to the extent to which the establishment recoils at the libertarian-minded Paul, mainstream media outlets -- which have been quick to report on other developments in the majority leader race -- pretended not to notice that Paul had signaled his interest in the job. More than 24 hours after Paul's test-the-waters tweet-fest began, not a single major outlet had brought it to the attention of their audience.
That may be his strongest endorsement yet.
Government
The Great Replacement Loophole: Illegal Immigrants Score 5-Year Work Benefit While “Waiting” For Deporation, Asylum
The Great Replacement Loophole: Illegal Immigrants Score 5-Year Work Benefit While "Waiting" For Deporation, Asylum
Over the past several…
Over the past several months we've pointed out that there has been zero job creation for native-born workers since the summer of 2018...
... and that since Joe Biden was sworn into office, most of the post-pandemic job gains the administration continuously brags about have gone foreign-born (read immigrants, mostly illegal ones) workers.
And while the left might find this data almost as verboten as FBI crime statistics - as it directly supports the so-called "great replacement theory" we're not supposed to discuss - it also coincides with record numbers of illegal crossings into the United States under Biden.
In short, the Biden administration opened the floodgates, 10 million illegal immigrants poured into the country, and most of the post-pandemic "jobs recovery" went to foreign-born workers, of which illegal immigrants represent the largest chunk.
'But Tyler, illegal immigrants can't possibly work in the United States whilst awaiting their asylum hearings,' one might hear from the peanut gallery. On the contrary: ever since Biden reversed a key aspect of Trump's labor policies, all illegal immigrants - even those awaiting deportation proceedings - have been given carte blanche to work while awaiting said proceedings for up to five years...
... something which even Elon Musk was shocked to learn.
Wow, learn something new every day https://t.co/8MDtEEZGam
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2024
Which leads us to another question: recall that the primary concern for the Biden admin for much of 2022 and 2023 was soaring prices, i.e., relentless inflation in general, and rising wages in particular, which in turn prompted even Goldman to admit two years ago that the diabolical wage-price spiral had been unleashed in the US (diabolical, because nothing absent a major economic shock, read recession or depression, can short-circuit it once it is in place).
Well, there is one other thing that can break the wage-price spiral loop: a flood of ultra-cheap illegal immigrant workers. But don't take our word for it: here is Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself during his February 60 Minutes interview:
PELLEY: Why was immigration important?
POWELL: Because, you know, immigrants come in, and they tend to work at a rate that is at or above that for non-immigrants. Immigrants who come to the country tend to be in the workforce at a slightly higher level than native Americans do. But that's largely because of the age difference. They tend to skew younger.
PELLEY: Why is immigration so important to the economy?
POWELL: Well, first of all, immigration policy is not the Fed's job. The immigration policy of the United States is really important and really much under discussion right now, and that's none of our business. We don't set immigration policy. We don't comment on it.
I will say, over time, though, the U.S. economy has benefited from immigration. And, frankly, just in the last, year a big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era.
PELLEY: The country needed the workers.
POWELL: It did. And so, that's what's been happening.
Translation: Immigrants work hard, and Americans are lazy. But much more importantly, since illegal immigrants will work for any pay, and since Biden's Department of Homeland Security, via its Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency, has made it so illegal immigrants can work in the US perfectly legally for up to 5 years (if not more), one can argue that the flood of illegals through the southern border has been the primary reason why inflation - or rather mostly wage inflation, that all too critical component of the wage-price spiral - has moderated in in the past year, when the US labor market suddenly found itself flooded with millions of perfectly eligible workers, who just also happen to be illegal immigrants and thus have zero wage bargaining options.
None of this is to suggest that the relentless flood of immigrants into the US is not also driven by voting and census concerns - something Elon Musk has been pounding the table on in recent weeks, and has gone so far to call it "the biggest corruption of American democracy in the 21st century", but in retrospect, one can also argue that the only modest success the Biden admin has had in the past year - namely bringing inflation down from a torrid 9% annual rate to "only" 3% - has also been due to the millions of illegals he's imported into the country.
We would be remiss if we didn't also note that this so often carries catastrophic short-term consequences for the social fabric of the country (the Laken Riley fiasco being only the latest example), not to mention the far more dire long-term consequences for the future of the US - chief among them the trillions of dollars in debt the US will need to incur to pay for all those new illegal immigrants Democrat voters and low-paid workers. This is on top of the labor revolution that will kick in once AI leads to mass layoffs among high-paying, white-collar jobs, after which all those newly laid off native-born workers hoping to trade down to lower paying (if available) jobs will discover that hardened criminals from Honduras or Guatemala have already taken them, all thanks to Joe Biden.
-
Uncategorized3 weeks ago
All Of The Elements Are In Place For An Economic Crisis Of Staggering Proportions
-
Uncategorized1 month ago
Cathie Wood sells a major tech stock (again)
-
Uncategorized3 weeks ago
California Counties Could Be Forced To Pay $300 Million To Cover COVID-Era Program
-
Uncategorized2 weeks ago
Apparel Retailer Express Moving Toward Bankruptcy
-
Uncategorized4 weeks ago
Industrial Production Decreased 0.1% in January
-
International3 days ago
Walmart launches clever answer to Target’s new membership program
-
International3 days ago
EyePoint poaches medical chief from Apellis; Sandoz CFO, longtime BioNTech exec to retire
-
Uncategorized3 weeks ago
RFK Jr: The Wuhan Cover-Up & The Rise Of The Biowarfare-Industrial Complex