Is There a Holiday Bitcoin Rally in the Works?

On-chain data suggests bullish sentiment might be rising for bitcoin

article-image

Blockworks exclusive art by Axel Rangel

share

key takeaways

  • The unspent miner supply of crypto is closing in at all-time highs, which suggests that miners are holding on to their bitcoin in anticipation of an upcoming bull market
  • Singapore-based QCP capital wrote in a recent note that it expects a squeeze to take place over the holidays and into 2022 as liquidity thins out

Bitcoin has been range bound for most of December, stuck in a rut after the crash earlier this month that sent its price dropping from $57,000 to just above $48,000. But this might change over the course of the holiday period, according to two notes that came out today.

London-based GlobalBlock argues that some on-chain metrics are beginning to look bullish for bitcoin, after altcoins had some dramatic upwards moves earlier this week. The firm argues that the number of coins going unspent by miners is indicative of a belief by miners that upwards price action is on the horizon.

“On-chain metrics continue to be bullish as the unspent miner supply closes in on all-time-highs. These are the coins that are issued to miners as a reward for solving a block but have never been spent on-chain,” GlobalBlock’s Marcus Sotiriou wrote.

“This shows the sentiment of miners and, by holding their mined Bitcoin, this suggests that they anticipate significant price rise in the short to mid-term.”


Sotiriou added that he believes that Visa’s recent announcement that it was doubling-down on crypto adoption via its new crypto advisory division is also quite bullish for asset prices.

“Crypto being incorporated into the network effects of giants like Visa is how I think the crypto industry will on board billions of users over the next decade and hence avoid a multiyear bear market as seen in previous cycles,” he wrote.

In a note published Wednesday, Singapore’s QCP capital wrote that it was “surprised at the massive volume of option selling across the board.”

The firm said it believes that liquidity will thin out into the holidays and into 2022, and there will likely be a topside squeeze during that time.

Bitcoin started the Wednesday trading session in the US at about $49,200, up 0.3%, according to CoinGecko.


Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every evening. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.


Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.jpg

Research

The BitcoinOS team is the first to have developed and posted a ZK-compressed proof on the Bitcoin network. Other proof verification efforts have been limited to the Signet or testnet deployments. Their work has resulted in the development of BitSNARK, a software library for ZK-compressed fraud proofs on the Bitcoin network. The project aims to provide a horizontal scaling solution, offering a one-stop shop for teams interested in developing a rollup on Bitcoin. This approach shares similarities with the horizontal tech stack scaling in other ecosystems like Cosmos and Optimism, particularly in its focus on simplified verification, bridging standards, and lightweight interoperability.

/

article-image

A16z’s State of Crypto report shows that DeFi has the largest number of daily active addresses, with stablecoins following closely behind

article-image

G2 is delivering real-world performance breakthroughs at 50-100 Mgas/s, Conduit says

article-image

World Liberty Financial’s token sale debuted just as an absurd AI-fueled memecoin captured crypto’s attention

article-image

Coinbase hired History Associates in 2023 to assist in retrieving records from the SEC and FDIC

article-image

Hours after pledging to support Black men’s rights to safely invest in crypto, VP Harris’s Monday night speech mentioned blockchain zero times