The "Black Summer" of the crypto market has just passed, and the price of Bitcoin has recovered slightly, and the direction of market sentiment is still unclear.
Research institution Glassnode recently released a report titled "Surviving the Sell-Off", and the data in this report shows some interesting situations. In the past month, first of all, the continuous outflow of ETFs led to the decline of the market, and then panic. The German government's selling of Bitcoin actually affected the price of Bitcoin more in terms of market sentiment. The selling pressure itself did not have as much impact on the price of Bitcoin as the community imagined.
So after more than ten days of continuous inflow of ETFs, what is the impact of the potential selling pressure in Mentougou on the market? What other sellers need to consider? Based on the report and combined with data from other institutions, BlockBeats sorted out the multiple selling pressure factors faced by the Bitcoin market.
Just last Friday, the German government sent the last 3,846 bitcoins to the trading platform, and the bitcoins in its address were completely exhausted. Bitcoin also turned to rise, but after regaining a positive attitude, there is still "140,000 bitcoin selling pressure" in Mt. Gox hanging over the market.
In fact, if you look back at the market's tragic drop in the past month, you will find that in the process of Bitcoin falling from $71,000 to below $54,000, the main factors that contributed to the decline came from the profit-taking of trading platforms and the outflow of ETF funds, and the unexpected selling pressure from the German government was not the dominant factor.
From the report data of Glassnode, it can be seen that since June, the outflow of bitcoins from trading platforms and ETFs has begun to increase, followed by a step-by-step drop in the price of bitcoin by nearly 15%.
The German government's selling of bitcoins did not start to affect prices until mid-to-late June, adding a layer of panic to the already downward market. The German government's selling of bitcoins and the decline in bitcoin prices occurred in the four days after July 1. During these four days, bitcoin plummeted by nearly 15%. During this process, the German government sold 15,000 bitcoins, accounting for one-third of the total 54,800 bitcoins.
On July 4, the price of bitcoin fell below $54,000, and the transfer of the remaining 40,000 bitcoins of the German government was monitored one by one. However, the price of bitcoin has since started to rise, and it seems that it has not been affected by the selling pressure that accounts for two-thirds of the total amount of bitcoins held by the German government.
When Bitcoin tried to reach $59,000 three times on July 7, 8, and 9, the market sentiment was still extremely low. Crypto analyst Alex Krüger published an analysis and calculation of the decline that could be caused by the sale of Bitcoin by Mentougou and the German government on his social platform on the 9th. He believed that if Germany sold the remaining Bitcoin at one time and 30% of the 85,000 Bitcoins held by Mentougou were sold, Bitcoin might fall another 10.5%.
In the following days, the market rose by 7%. This shows that the impact of the German government's large-scale selling on the price of Bitcoin is not as great as the community imagines. So how much impact will the "Mentougou 140,000 Bitcoin selling pressure" that has not yet landed and is hanging over the head have on the market?
So far, Mt.Gox has repaid assets to more than half of its creditors. According to court documents and related reports of Mt.Gox during its bankruptcy, there are about 24,000 creditors who have submitted claims. Yesterday, Mt.Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi issued a notice showing that the trustee has repaid BTC and BCH to more than 13,000 creditors.
The market sentiment is neutral to negative. For example, @Trader T published a post on the X platform on July 13, predicting that Mt.Gox will sell more than 100,000 bitcoins before November. According to the worst-case scenario, Mt.Gox will sell 80% of its bitcoins, which may bring $4.62 billion in liquidation pressure to the market.
Cycle Capital also speculates that if the compensation of Mentougou is sold out within a month, the selling pressure faced by the market will be similar to the German government's selling, with the amount and time of selling being similar. However, after more than 10 years, the market is more willing to believe that the creditors of Mentougou will sell some of the bitcoins, but not all of them.
Cycle Capital predicts that if the compensation of Mentougou lasts longer, up to 2-3 months, the number of bitcoins entering the market every day will not be particularly large, and will not cause a one-time rapid decline. However, due to the continued expectation of selling pressure, the market may fluctuate for a period of time, and the selling will be digested through fluctuations. This also means that it is difficult for the main rising wave to come in the short term.
In terms of "historical factors", in addition to special sources of selling pressure such as the Mentougou bankruptcy incident and the government's seizure of funds, there is also the regular source of selling pressure from Bitcoin miners that cannot be ignored.
According to CryptoQuant analyst joaowedson, Bitcoin miners transferred a total of about $166.2 billion worth of Bitcoin to CEX from 2023 to 2024, most of which occurred in 2024, and only $48 billion of Bitcoin was withdrawn. Analysts believe that such a large amount of transfers by Bitcoin miners is unprecedented, and miners may also become the largest sellers in the cryptocurrency market.
In this cycle, there are traces of miners selling Bitcoin. After the Bitcoin halving, miners' income has dropped sharply. In order to keep the mines running, miners are likely to sell more Bitcoin to hedge the sharp drop in income.
During the decline in Bitcoin prices over the past month, Bitcoin computing power has also dropped significantly. Glassnode chief analyst James Check once analyzed that "the current online hash rate is low and the speed of block generation is slightly slow. This indicates that mining is difficult. This may be due to a variety of reasons, including increased operating costs, falling Bitcoin prices, or equipment problems of miners."
According to data from The Block, on June 24, Bitcoin miners' mining income hit an all-time low. In more than a month, Bitcoin miners have sold more than 30,000 BTC (about US$2 billion), the fastest speed in more than a year.
On July 6, CryptoQuant data showed that the average daily miner outflow reached the highest number in nearly a month and a half, indicating that miners are likely to sell their Bitcoin reserves.
James once expressed his opinion at the end of June that Bitcoin miners have not started to "sell all" because they may be in the break-even period. So how much Bitcoin do miners have? After Bitcoin's brief rise, how much impact does the selling pressure from miners have on the price?
Since all the addresses of miners cannot be monitored, the research institution Glassnode made a more optimistic statistical calculation.
Glassnode compared the "net flow of miners" monitored in the past year with the "net deposits/withdrawals of centralized exchanges" and the "net flow into ETF on-chain wallets." The results show that the balance changes of miners' addresses are about ±500 BTC per week, while CEX and ETF related addresses often experience large fluctuations of ±4K BTC. Based on this, Glassnode believes that the market influence flowing through the latter two entities may be 4 to 8 times greater than that of miners.
This number cannot be verified, but what is certain is that as ETFs continue to buy a large amount of Bitcoin, the market has realized that the pricing power of Bitcoin is indeed shifting from Bitcoin miners to the traditional financial institutions behind more than a dozen Bitcoin spot ETFs.
So what is the recent situation of Bitcoin spot ETFs?
Glassnode analysis shows that the position of Bitcoin falling below $54,000 at the beginning of this month is already lower than the average inflow cost of Bitcoin holders, so the Bitcoin spot ETF foundation chose to start entering the market.
On the other hand, ETF fund flows are also closely related to inflation data, and last week's CPI data was weaker than expected, and the market believes that ETF funds may continue to flow in.
Looking back over the past two weeks, it will be found that traditional financial institutions have started the "bottom-fishing" program. Bitcoin spot ETFs have shown net inflows for 11 consecutive days. Matrixport's latest report also pointed out that Bitcoin spot ETFs ended a week of trading with an inflow of $310 million last Friday, the highest daily inflow level in more than a month.
The day before yesterday, 11 U.S. spot Bitcoin funds had a cumulative net inflow of 6,532 bitcoins, worth a total of approximately $422.5 million, the highest single-day net inflow since June 5, continuing an 11-day upward trend. These funds attracted more than $1 billion in funds in 3 days.
The centralized trading platforms that absorb most of the liquidity in the crypto market have more positions than spot ETF funds. Although the reasons for the outflow of liquidity through trading platforms are difficult to guess, there are still some indicators that can reflect some signals.
ConsenSys researcher David Alexander II pointed out yesterday that "after a brutal week, BTC futures positions have now increased by $570 million, up 21% from last week, and have recovered to their highest level since June 23."
After the market turned better, Bitcoin futures open interest increased significantly. The day before yesterday, the 24-hour increase in Bitcoin futures open interest on the CME platform reached 7.8%, and as of writing, the total open interest of the entire network was about 510,800 BTC, worth about $33.18 billion, an increase of 23% from the lowest point a week ago.
Yesterday, Bitcoin rose above $66,000. After a monthly decline of nearly 20%, Bitcoin rose 17% in 5 days, and the entire crypto market has seen a general rise in the past few days. It is certain that the downward trend that has lasted for a month has completely turned the page. If we calculate based on Bitcoin's high price of $66,000 yesterday, it is still 10.61% away from $73,000.
The market seems to have reached a critical point again. Today, Bitcoin has fallen below $65,000, and is $64,628 at the time of writing.
According to Coinglass data, based on the current mainstream CEX contract positions, if Bitcoin rebounds and breaks through $68,000, it is expected that $801 million of short orders will be liquidated; if Bitcoin falls to around $63,000, it is expected that $1.558 billion of long orders will be liquidated. According to the current price of Bitcoin, the rise and fall of the above two positions are 5.52% and 3.52% respectively.
In an unpredictable market, being too conservative may lose profit opportunities, and blind optimism will wear out the principal in the fluctuations. The flag seems to be in sight, but it also seems to be lurking with danger. Where is the "bull back"? There is no answer yet.
欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群:
Telegram 订阅群:https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram 交流群:https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Twitter 官方账号:https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia