More crypto in-the-money traders dwindle, hinting at capitulation

The number of anonymous Bitcoin addresses in the money, meaning those that acquired their holdings at prices below today’s, has reached lows not seen since March of 2020, according to Bequant, a digital-asset firm. The level, currently hovering around 51%, “points to capitulation,” though bear markets in 2015 and 2018 saw even lower lows, wrote Martha Reyes and Emiliano Bruno in a note.

Crypto prices have been in a slump this year as the Federal Reserve withdraws stimulus and hikes rates to combat inflation. The environment has been toxic for all manner of riskier assets, including richly valued tech companies. But cryptocurrencies have been hit particularly hard, with Bitcoin losing more than a third of its value this year, and others, including Ether, shedding 50%. Even Bitcoin miners have started to offload tokens they had hoarded as many are seeing few signs prices could recover soon.

“It feels very much to me like crypto is also subject to a lot of the monetary cycle that’s been hitting the more traditional asset classes,” Kara Murphy, CIO of Kestra Holdings, said. “Looking at the rapid increase in crypto prices, it seems clear that they really benefited from easy-money policies, and now that the money is coming out of the system, that’s a good part of the reason why crypto is declining more recently.”

In its second consecutive session lower, Bitcoin fell as much as 4.8% on Wednesday to trade around $29,800.

With prices trading at the lower end of the last 17-month range, the bulk of buyers over that span are holding unrealized losses, according to strategists at Glassnode, who cite something called the Net Unrealized Profit/Loss metric, or NUPL, which maps out unrealized profits and losses as a proportion of market value.