2024-06-13 00:00:37 by NewsBTC

Glassnode has discussed in a new report the reasons behind Bitcoin moving sideways despite inflows into the spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Why Bitcoin Has Been Stagnant Despite Spot ETF Inflows In its latest weekly report, the analytics firm Glassnode has talked about how the impressive inflows into the US spot ETFs have failed to make the price break its sideways trend. The spot ETFs, which the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved in January of this year, have provided investors with an alternate means of gaining exposure to the cryptocurrency. These funds buy and hold Bitcoin on behalf of their users, letting them get indirect exposure to the coin’s price movements without having to own the asset itself. The more traditional investors, who don’t want to attempt to navigate cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets, have found the spot ETFs to be a comfortable investment option. Since their launch, the spot ETFs have brought large demand for the asset. Initially, these fresh capital inflows helped BTC rise to a new all-time high (ATH), but recently, the asset has been consolidated. Below is a chart that shows how the combined reserve of these funds compares against the other large entities in the sector. The US spot ETF compared against the total adjusted circulating supply of the asset | Source: Glassnode’s The Week Onchain – Week 24, 2024From the graph, it’s visible that the spot ETFs hold 862,000 BTC. This is more than what the miners (excluding Patoshi) hold (706,000 BTC) but notably less than the reserve of the centralized exchanges (2.3 million BTC). Glassnode has noted that the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase alone holds a big part of the total exchange reserve and the US spot ETF balance through its custody service. The data in the balance held by the Coinbase platform | Source: Glassnode’s The Week Onchain – Week 24, 2024“With Coinbase serving both ETF clients and conventional on-chain asset holders, the gravity of the exchange in the market pricing process has become significant,” reads the report. The data for the whale deposits to the platform reveal a rising trend until mid-April. Looks like the indicator’s value had been quite high earlier in the year | Source: Glassnode’s The Week Onchain – Week 24, 2024According to the analytics firm, a significant portion of these whale deposits had come from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), adding to the selling pressure in the market. The whale exchange inflows shooting up may partly explain why the spot ETFs haven’t proven as effective. Another factor behind the consolidation can be the trend in the futures market. The chart below shows that the CME’s future open interest has recently been at high levels. The trend in the CME futures open interest over the last few years | Source: Glassnode’s The Week Onchain – Week 24, 2024The report thinks this could signal that an increasing number of traders have been adopting a cash-and-carry arbitrage strategy. This arbitrage involves a market-neutral position, coupling the purchase of a long spot position, and the sale (short) of a position in a futures contract of the same underlying asset which is trading at a premium. This could explain why the spot ETF inflows have only been able to have a neutral impact on the prices in the Bitcoin market recently. BTC Price Bitcoin has swiftly recovered more than 4% in the past 24 hours as its price is now back above $69,700. The price of the asset has moved sideways overall recently | Source: BTCUSD on TradingViewFeatured image from Dall-E, Glassnode.com, chart from TradingView.com Keshav Verma Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021. Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to. In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career in Physics, but the onset of COVID led to a shift in plans. The virus meant that the college classes had to be delivered in the online-mode and with it came free time for him to explore other passions. Initially only seeking to make some beer money, Keshav unexpectedly landed clients offering real projects, after which there was no looking back. Writing was something he had always enjoyed and to be able to do it for a living was like a dream come true. Keshav completed his Physics degree in 2022 and has been focusing on his writing career since, but that doesn’t mean his passion for Physics has ended. He eventually plans to re-enter university to obtain a masters degree in the same field, but perhaps only to satiate his own interest rather than for using it as a means to find employment.. Keshav has found blockchain and its concepts fascinating ever since he started going down the rabbit-hole back in 2020. On-chain analysis in particular has been something he likes to research more about, which is why his NewsBTC pieces tend to involve it in some form. Being of the science background, Keshav likes if concepts are clear and consistent, so he generally explains the indicators he talks about in a bit of detail so that the readers can perhaps come out having understood and learnt something new. As for hobbies, Keshav is super into football, anime, and videogames. He enjoys football not only as a watcher, but also as a player. For games, Keshav generally tends towards enjoying singleplayer adventures, with EA FC (formerly FIFA) being the only online game he is active in. Though, perhaps due to being ultra-focused on the game, he is today a semi-pro on the EA FC scene, regularly participating in tournaments and sometimes even taking back prize money. Because of his enthusiasm for anime and games, he also self-learned Japanese along the way to consume some of the untranslated gems out there. The skill didn’t merely remain as just a hobby, either, as he put it to productive use during his exploration for small-time gigs at the start of COVID, fulfilling a couple of Japanese-to-English translation jobs. Keshav is also big into fitness, with agility and acceleration-related workouts making a big part of his program due to the relevance they have in football. On top of that, he also has a more traditional strength based program for the gym, which he does to maintain an overall fitness level of his body. 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