First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Unaffected by Bank of England’s Super-Size Interest-Rate Hike

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There hasn’t been a lot of exciting news this week for bitcoin (BTC) – a possible explanation for its six-day losing streak through Wednesday. But it’s not falling out of bed, either. Over the course of the slide, the price of the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency has only lost about 4%.

BTC appeared unaffected by the news that the Bank of England (BOE) raised key interest rates by half a percentage point on Thursday, amid concern U.K. inflation will be over 10% next year.

The bank raised its key rate to 1.75% from 1.25%, the largest single step in more than a quarter-century.

The sterling dropped heavily against the dollar following the statement.

Ether (ETH) was also trading down 3% on the day while other altcoins were all mostly in the red. Exceptions included Tezos, Fantom and NEAR Protocol which were all up by 2% over the last 24 hours.

In other news, asset management giant BlackRock has partnered with the publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase to make crypto directly available to institutional investors.

Mutual customers of Coinbase and BlackRock’s investment management platform, Aladdin, will have access to crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage and reporting capabilities, according to a blog post Thursday.

Saylor puts full focus on bitcoin

MicroStrategy (MSTR) stock was up nearly 15% on Wednesday, after news broke the prior evening that Michael Saylor is stepping down as CEO to become executive chairman with a sole focus on the company’s bitcoin strategy.

A new report from blockchain analytics company Chainalysis estimates that $2 billion worth of crypto has been siphoned out of cross-chain bridges this year alone, which includes this week’s $190 million Nomad bridge exploit.

Developers behind Solana blockchain are saying the closed-source Slope wallet may be responsible for the ongoing exploit this week that has resulted in millions of dollars’ worth of crypto tokens being stolen from more than 9,000 hot wallets.

A crypto warning for Turkey

Finally check out this opinion piece from Burak Tamac, senior researcher at CryptoQuant, and economist Erkan Oz on lessons from the Turkish government’s hasty attempt to regulate cryptocurrencies. The authors believe that the government’s views on crypto is a restriction on freedom, and is not only ethically and constitutionally wrong but also would worsen the country’s capital outflow problem rather than solving it.

Rare Signal Hinting at Bitcoin Price Bottom Emerges

By Omkar Godbole

Predicting a bear market bottom is like catching a falling knife. Even so, traders often attempt to predict one based on how the price behaved relative to critical indicators during previous bear runs. The assumption here is that history will repeat itself.

One such rare signal has emerged, suggesting bitcoin’s decline may be flattening and now is the best time to add exposure to the cryptocurrency.

The bitcoin mining difficulty ribbon, comprising short and long-duration simple moving averages on the mining difficulty, has compressed for the first time in over a year, indicating miner capitulation. The previous bear markets, including the one seen in 2014, ended with the ribbon compression, data provided by analytics firm Glassnode show.

“The bitcoin ribbon data set has historically proven to be an optimal entry point indicator and I believe this time it will show its predictive power again,” Markus Thielen, chief investment officer at British Virgin Islands-based IDEG Asset Management (IDEG), said in an email. “We are also entering the 18-months pre-bitcoin-halving period (Sep ’22) – a time window where bitcoin prices tended to boom out.”

Miner capitulation occurs when those responsible for minting coins shut down operations, resulting in a decline in the hashrate and mining difficulty. That reduces the selling pressure, allowing for price stability and an eventual bull revival. Miners often sell coins mined to fund operational costs, adding to bearish pressures in the market.

The ribbon includes 9-, 14-, 25-, 40-, 60-, 90-, 128- and 200-day simple moving averages on mining difficulty, a measure of how difficult it is to mine a block and verify transactions in bitcoin’s blockchain.

Recently several miners have capitulated to stay solvent. Mining difficulty is adjusted every two weeks. The number of participants in the mining network and their total mining power determines whether the difficulty is adjusted lower or higher.

Read the full story here.

By Omkar Godbole