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Countdown to the yearly close: 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

Things may be calmer than expected as 2021 ends, but the chances for "face-melting" green candles are still there, say analysts.
Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week near $51,000 as the end of 2021 draws near and traders down tools for…

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Things may be calmer than expected as 2021 ends, but the chances for "face-melting" green candles are still there, say analysts.

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week near $51,000 as the end of 2021 draws near and traders down tools for the holidays.

After a $50,000 Christmas, Bitcoin continues to take stock of a year in which it has gone from $29,000 to $69,000 and halfway back again.

Expectations were certainly not for such eerie calm to round out December — a blow-off top, the majority argued, should have already taken the market to $100,000 and beyond.

Instead, after dipping to $41,800, a slow grind through familiar territory is how Bitcoin appears to be finishing off what has been a post-halving year full of surprises.

With mixed emotions characterizing the end of Q4, Cointelegraph takes a look at what could shape BTC price action for the remaining few days of 2021.

Bitcoin on shorter timeframes: “Gently does it”

Despite concerns that thin liquidity could spark increased spot price volatility during the holiday season, so far, the opposite is true — Bitcoin is quiet, possibly too quiet.

The weekend saw little by way of unusual price moves, with a brief dip below $50,000 subsequently returning to the upside.

At the time of writing, $51,000 is forming a focus once more, with limited action up or down, data fro Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows. 

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

For popular Twitter trader Pentoshi, this was reason enough to lie in wait for the more important $53,000 zone to return before acting.

“Eyes still on 49.2 and 53-55k range per prev charts (contested territories),” he confirmed late on Sunday.

He noted the “clean” nature of BTC/USD on weekly timeframes, with the pair just above the midpoint in a multi-month range with $58,000 as its upper bound and $32,000 as its lower bound.

$58,000, he added in comments, could be the “most defining spot” for chartists in 2022.

Cautious in the short term, meanwhile, was filbfilb, co-founder of trading platform Decentrader, who despite flagging multiple bullish signals on Christmas Day warned that current BTC/USD levels may be something of a bull trap.

For him, the 50-day moving average, currently at $54,700, would be a bullish trigger point for the new year.

Stock-to-flow lives to fight another year

They may be facing a barrage of criticism, but the perennial stock-to-flow Bitcoin price models — and their creator, PlanB — refuse to give up.

According to tracking account S2F Multiple, BTC/USD should ideally be trading at above $97,000 this week, but reality has other ideas.

With the latest drawdown from all-time highs, Bitcoin is challenging the capabilities of a model series that has so far never been invalidated.

This has provided for contention — stock-to-flow uses two standard deviation bands around a key trajectory to monitor price, and Bitcoin currently sits between them. While in fact nowhere near invalid, the model has courted claims that its range of acceptable price action is too wide to be useful.

These were exacerbated when PlanB appeared to say that he would abandon the models should BTC/USD not trade at $100,000 by the end of 2021.

“To be clear: I have no doubt whatsoever that bitcoin S2FX is correct and #bitcoin will tap $100K-288K before Dec2021,” he wrote in part of comments in early November.

He subsequently retracted those claims, stressing that the standard deviation bands would dictate any technical invalidation. As such, stock-to-flow (S2F) and its spin-off stock-to-flow cross-asset (S2FX), both remain in play.

“Imagine thinking a model that has stayed within 1 standard deviation band for 3yrs has failed,” he countered.

“IMO we are in the exact same spot as March 2019 when I published S2F model: at the low end of the 1sd band. DYOR. Look at the chart. Your choice.”
Bitcoin stock-to-flow chart as of Dec. 27. Source: Buy Bitcoin Worldwide

S2F requires an average $100,000 price tag for Bitcoin this halving cycle, while S2FX ups that to $288,000.

PlanB’s floor model, also accurate throughout Bitcoin’s history, failed to track the monthly close for the first time in November.

Beware the open interest time bomb

Bitcoin spot price action could give everyone a headache on thin holiday volumes, but a key area to watch is derivatives.

After the clearout earlier this month, open interest in Bitcoin futures has been creeping back up. This in and of itself is unremarkable, but should expanding open interest combine with a conversely declining price, the stage is set for pain, filbfilb warns.

He reasoned, however, that nuances mean the relationship between price and open interest moves is not as simple, but would “save” traders’ positions in volatile periods.

Concerns have subsided, meanwhile, following the flushing out of excessive leverage across derivatives markets in the $42,000 rout.

Despite leverage since returning, funding rates are neutral at $50,000, a conspicuous change from just several weeks ago, and confidence is building that sustained price upside can now continue as a result.

On-chain indicators governing buyer and seller behavior, meanwhile, are also showing signs of a potential turnaround.

“Big thing I keep my eyes on is for when the trend for both net realized profit and loss decrease to low levels,” Twitter account On-Chain College noted Sunday, highlighting data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode.

“Tells me that sellers may be exhausted, and we potentially could have more drastic price movement if buyers step in.”
Bitcoin net realized profit/ loss annotated chart. Source: On-Chain College/ Twitter

Liquidity caution spills over to macro

Macro markets presented a now standard range of risk issues for the holiday break, these nonetheless also apt to cause greater than average moves thanks to reduced liquidity.

The prognosis for the coming days was thus “either the headline reel will spur ugly intraday moves on holiday-thinned liquidity, or volatility will remain so flatline, that if it were an ECG, the doctors and nurses would be yelling code blue,” Bloomberg quoted Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at forex broker Oanda, as saying.

Such headlines could revolve around Coronavirus or China, with Asian stocks down Monday and European indexes looking peaky at the open.

U.S. equities hit fresh all-time highs in the run-up to the Christmas break, capping a momentous year in which the S&P 500 alone saw 68 new records.

The U.S. dollar, however, is yet to recover its previous intense uptrend, with the U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) treading water into the end of the year. This could provide at least some respite for Bitcoin traders should stocks also benefit.

DXY remains near its highest since June 2020.

U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) 1-week candle chart. Source: TradingView

Bitcoin “melts faces when people least expect it”

Bitcoin traders are getting more, not less, fearful as 2021 fades.

Related: Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, MATIC, NEAR, ATOM, HNT

As per the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, a popular sentiment gauge which factors in a range of variables to produce an overall impression of trader emotions, the market is far from out of the woods — even above $50,000.

As of Monday, Fear & Greed stands at 40/100, characterizing “fear,” having hit highs of 45/100 last week.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me

The Index has shown that sentiment has been particularly sensitive to even small price fluctuations since the rout.

The implication is therefore that jitters could spark more emotional trading reactions, and a price event could result in a snowball effect up or down.

Under normal circumstances, however, a mass capitulation event only occurs during periods of “extreme greed,” in which the Index measures 90/100 or more.

Taking a more optimistic tone, meanwhile, Blocksteam CSO Samson Mow argued that most lay market paritcaptans are too gloomy this Christmas.

“Bitcoin usually melts faces when people least expect it,” he said during a Twitter discussion.

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NY Fed Finds Medium, Long-Term Inflation Expectations Jump Amid Surge In Stock Market Optimism

NY Fed Finds Medium, Long-Term Inflation Expectations Jump Amid Surge In Stock Market Optimism

One month after the inflation outlook tracked…

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46 mins ago

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March 11, 2024

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NY Fed Finds Medium, Long-Term Inflation Expectations Jump Amid Surge In Stock Market Optimism

One month after the inflation outlook tracked by the NY Fed Consumer Survey extended their late 2023 slide, with 3Y inflation expectations in January sliding to a record low 2.4% (from 2.6% in December), even as 1 and 5Y inflation forecasts remained flat, moments ago the NY Fed reported that in February there was a sharp rebound in longer-term inflation expectations, rising to 2.7% from 2.4% at the three-year ahead horizon, and jumping to 2.9% from 2.5% at the five-year ahead horizon, while the 1Y inflation outlook was flat for the 3rd month in a row, stuck at 3.0%. 

The increases in both the three-year ahead and five-year ahead measures were most pronounced for respondents with at most high school degrees (in other words, the "really smart folks" are expecting deflation soon). The survey’s measure of disagreement across respondents (the difference between the 75th and 25th percentile of inflation expectations) decreased at all horizons, while the median inflation uncertainty—or the uncertainty expressed regarding future inflation outcomes—declined at the one- and three-year ahead horizons and remained unchanged at the five-year ahead horizon.

Going down the survey, we find that the median year-ahead expected price changes increased by 0.1 percentage point to 4.3% for gas; decreased by 1.8 percentage points to 6.8% for the cost of medical care (its lowest reading since September 2020); decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 5.8% for the cost of a college education; and surprisingly decreased by 0.3 percentage point for rent to 6.1% (its lowest reading since December 2020), and remained flat for food at 4.9%.

We find the rent expectations surprising because it is happening just asking rents are rising across the country.

At the same time as consumers erroneously saw sharply lower rents, median home price growth expectations remained unchanged for the fifth consecutive month at 3.0%.

Turning to the labor market, the survey found that the average perceived likelihood of voluntary and involuntary job separations increased, while the perceived likelihood of finding a job (in the event of a job loss) declined. "The mean probability of leaving one’s job voluntarily in the next 12 months also increased, by 1.8 percentage points to 19.5%."

Mean unemployment expectations - or the mean probability that the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher one year from now - decreased by 1.1 percentage points to 36.1%, the lowest reading since February 2022. Additionally, the median one-year-ahead expected earnings growth was unchanged at 2.8%, remaining slightly below its 12-month trailing average of 2.9%.

Turning to household finance, we find the following:

  • The median expected growth in household income remained unchanged at 3.1%. The series has been moving within a narrow range of 2.9% to 3.3% since January 2023, and remains above the February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 2.7%.
  • Median household spending growth expectations increased by 0.2 percentage point to 5.2%. The increase was driven by respondents with a high school degree or less.
  • Median year-ahead expected growth in government debt increased to 9.3% from 8.9%.
  • The mean perceived probability that the average interest rate on saving accounts will be higher in 12 months increased by 0.6 percentage point to 26.1%, remaining below its 12-month trailing average of 30%.
  • Perceptions about households’ current financial situations deteriorated somewhat with fewer respondents reporting being better off than a year ago. Year-ahead expectations also deteriorated marginally with a smaller share of respondents expecting to be better off and a slightly larger share of respondents expecting to be worse off a year from now.
  • The mean perceived probability that U.S. stock prices will be higher 12 months from now increased by 1.4 percentage point to 38.9%.
  • At the same time, perceptions and expectations about credit access turned less optimistic: "Perceptions of credit access compared to a year ago deteriorated with a larger share of respondents reporting tighter conditions and a smaller share reporting looser conditions compared to a year ago."

Also, a smaller percentage of consumers, 11.45% vs 12.14% in prior month, expect to not be able to make minimum debt payment over the next three months

Last, and perhaps most humorous, is the now traditional cognitive dissonance one observes with these polls, because at a time when long-term inflation expectations jumped, which clearly suggests that financial conditions will need to be tightened, the number of respondents expecting higher stock prices one year from today jumped to the highest since November 2021... which incidentally is just when the market topped out during the last cycle before suffering a painful bear market.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 12:40

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Spread & Containment

A major cruise line is testing a monthly subscription service

The Cruise Scarlet Summer Season Pass was designed with remote workers in mind.

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47 mins ago

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March 11, 2024

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While going on a cruise once meant disconnecting from the world when between ports because any WiFi available aboard was glitchy and expensive, advances in technology over the last decade have enabled millions to not only stay in touch with home but even work remotely.

With such remote workers and digital nomads in mind, Virgin Voyages has designed a monthly pass that gives those who want to work from the seas a WFH setup on its Scarlet Lady ship — while the latter acronym usually means "work from home," the cruise line is advertising as "work from the helm.”

Related: Royal Caribbean shares a warning with passengers

"Inspired by Richard Branson's belief and track record that brilliant work is best paired with a hearty dose of fun, we're welcoming Sailors on board Scarlet Lady for a full month to help them achieve that perfect work-life balance," Virgin Voyages said in announcing its new promotion. "Take a vacation away from your monotonous work-from-home set up (sorry, but…not sorry) and start taking calls from your private balcony overlooking the Mediterranean sea."

A man looks through his phone while sitting in a hot tub on a cruise ship.

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This is how much it'll cost you to work from a cruise ship for a month

While the single most important feature for successful work at sea — WiFi — is already available for free on Virgin cruises, the new Scarlet Summer Season Pass includes a faster connection, a $10 daily coffee credit, access to a private rooftop, and other member-only areas as well as wash and fold laundry service that Virgin advertises as a perk that will allow one to concentrate on work

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The pass starts at $9,990 for a two-guest cabin and is available for four monthlong cruises departing in June, July, August, and September — each departs from ports such as Barcelona, Marseille, and Palma de Mallorca and spends four weeks touring around the Mediterranean.

Longer cruises are becoming more common, here's why

The new pass is essentially a version of an upgraded cruise package with additional perks but is specifically tailored to those who plan on working from the ship as an opportunity to market to them.

"Stay connected to your work with the fastest at-sea internet in the biz when you want and log-off to let the exquisite landscape of the Mediterranean inspire you when you need," reads the promotional material for the pass.

Amid the rise of remote work post-pandemic, cruise lines have been seeing growing interest in longer journeys in which many of the passengers not just vacation in the traditional sense but work from a mobile office.

In 2023, Turkish cruise line operator Miray even started selling cabins on a three-year tour around the world but the endeavor hit the rocks after one of the engineers declared the MV Gemini ship the company planned to use for the journey "unseaworthy" and the cruise ship line dealt with a PR scandal that ultimately sank the project before it could take off.

While three years at sea would have set a record as the longest cruise journey on the market, companies such as Royal Caribbean  (RCL) (both with its namesake brand and its Celebrity Cruises line) have been offering increasingly long cruises that serve as many people’s temporary homes and cross through multiple continents.

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International

This is the biggest money mistake you’re making during travel

A retail expert talks of some common money mistakes travelers make on their trips.

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47 mins ago

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March 11, 2024

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Travel is expensive. Despite the explosion of travel demand in the two years since the world opened up from the pandemic, survey after survey shows that financial reasons are the biggest factor keeping some from taking their desired trips.

Airfare, accommodation as well as food and entertainment during the trip have all outpaced inflation over the last four years.

Related: This is why we're still spending an insane amount of money on travel

But while there are multiple tricks and “travel hacks” for finding cheaper plane tickets and accommodation, the biggest financial mistake that leads to blown travel budgets is much smaller and more insidious.

A traveler watches a plane takeoff at an airport gate.

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This is what you should (and shouldn’t) spend your money on while abroad

“When it comes to traveling, it's hard to resist buying items so you can have a piece of that memory at home,” Kristen Gall, a retail expert who heads the financial planning section at points-back platform Rakuten, told Travel + Leisure in an interview. “However, it's important to remember that you don't need every souvenir that catches your eye.”

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According to Gall, souvenirs not only have a tendency to add up in price but also weight which can in turn require one to pay for extra weight or even another suitcase at the airport — over the last two months, airlines like Delta  (DAL) , American Airlines  (AAL)  and JetBlue Airways  (JBLU)  have all followed each other in increasing baggage prices to in some cases as much as $60 for a first bag and $100 for a second one.

While such extras may not seem like a lot compared to the thousands one might have spent on the hotel and ticket, they all have what is sometimes known as a “coffee” or “takeout effect” in which small expenses can lead one to overspend by a large amount.

‘Save up for one special thing rather than a bunch of trinkets…’

“When traveling abroad, I recommend only purchasing items that you can't get back at home, or that are small enough to not impact your luggage weight,” Gall said. “If you’re set on bringing home a souvenir, save up for one special thing, rather than wasting your money on a bunch of trinkets you may not think twice about once you return home.”

Along with the immediate costs, there is also the risk of purchasing things that go to waste when returning home from an international vacation. Alcohol is subject to airlines’ liquid rules while certain types of foods, particularly meat and other animal products, can be confiscated by customs. 

While one incident of losing an expensive bottle of liquor or cheese brought back from a country like France will often make travelers forever careful, those who travel internationally less frequently will often be unaware of specific rules and be forced to part with something they spent money on at the airport.

“It's important to keep in mind that you're going to have to travel back with everything you purchased,” Gall continued. “[…] Be careful when buying food or wine, as it may not make it through customs. Foods like chocolate are typically fine, but items like meat and produce are likely prohibited to come back into the country.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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