Bitcoin is gearing up for something big, as record amounts of BTC leaves exchanges
As a result of the ongoing marketwide dump, Bitcoin’s 24-hour losses lay in excess of the 5% mark.
- Bitcoin’s technicals continue to look strong, with many analysts claiming that a year-end target of $250K may still very much be achievable for the digital currency.
- Bitcoin (BTC) stored across all CeFi exchanges has dropped to its lowest levels in over a year, signaling the return of a more HODL-centric mentality amongst investors.
- After China’s recent mining ban, which resulted in Bitcoin’s computing power dropping to all-time lows, the currency’s hashrate has made an impressive recovery.
The past 24 hours have been extremely rocky for Bitcoin, with the world’s largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization currently facing with high levels of volatility. The flagship crypto’s value dipped by 4.5% over in just a few hours. At press time, BTC is trading at $43,889.
Despite the turbulence, long-standing fractal data suggests that Bitcoin is still on track to ascend to the $250K-$350K range by the end of the ongoing calendar year. The trend was first identified by pseudonymous crypto analyst Bit Harington, who noted that following Bitcoin’s earlier price halvings in 2012 and 2016, the currency registered gains in excess of 600%. However, following last year’s event, the digital asset’s price has only risen by a modest +70%, thus leaving a huge window of opportunity for BTC to capitalize on.
Furthermore, in Harington’s view, Bitcoin could quite easily double in value in the near future, an assessment that is somewhat shared by many other prominent analysts, who believe that BTC could very easily be looking at a near term price target of $65,000.
Bitcoin balances across exchanges continue to plummet
As per data made available by crypto analytics provider CryptoQuant, Bitcoin reserves across all crypto exchanges dropped to their lowest levels in over 12 months — of 2.37 million BTC — recently. A decrease in BTC reserves indicates that investors may be looking to hold their crypto rather than participating in day trading activities to make short-term profits.
Bitcoin’s hashrate has made an impressive recovery. Its numbers are nearly back to where they were before China initiated a blanket mining ban across its borders, forcing the Bitcoin network’s computation power to plunge to 84.79 million terahashes per second (TH/s) in early July from 180.66 million TH/s in late May. At press time, Bitcoin’s hashrate is hovering around the 146 million TH/s range.
Looking ahead
Over the last year or so, central banks worldwide have continued to pursue extremely loose monetary policies resulting in BTC scaling up to its all-time high of $65K earlier this year. Additionally, with inflation fears looming large on the horizon, it appears as though interest in Bitcoin as a long-term store of value is continuing to rise. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out for the digital asset industry at large.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
