Daily Macro And Crypto Markets: Powerful Fundamentals Drive BTC and ETH Higher

So far, most numbers have been good, despite all the supply chain constraints.

Right now, equity indexes are staying close to or at all-time highs. This week, there will be a Fed meeting, which many expect will announce the end of the $150 billion bond buyer program. Or at least a slowdown. It’ll be fascinating to see how markets react.

In the crypto space, there’s definitely strength as well. Just on Friday, ETH was hitting new all-time highs, which, in my mind, is the gunshot that starts an altcoin race higher.

This morning, BTC is hovering above $61,500, and ETH is around $4,300. Not bad. We’ve seen some outperformance from MATIC, GRT, CURV, and NANO. All four coins have risen by between 15% and 20% in the past week. 

On the other hand, it’s important to note that some altcoins haven’t woken up yet, and have even retraced down. I’m thinking of STX, ADA, and DYDX.

Back to BTC, there are two must-see charts, one published by CryptoQuand and another from CoinMetrics. In the first, we can see the all-exchange bitcoin reserve rising during 2018 and 2019, but, now, since 2020, it is in an inexorable downtrend—coinciding with last year’s halving.

The other chart, more recent but just as significant, shows growth in medium/long-term holders. We can see that addresses holding coins for more than six months are growing steadily.

Put the two together, and you see an environment where holders aren’t parting with their coins and expect higher returns. This means fewer coins to go around on exchanges and takes us to where we are now, at higher prices.

While this looks at BTC, it’s also interesting to see a similar dynamic with ETH. And it’s exacerbated by the ongoing staking/locking of ETH and the ETH burns. The last two sometimes make the daily issuance of ETH negative, not positive, so every day, there is less ETH to go around, not more, which is just super powerful for the price. 

The last graph I wanted to show is the renewable energy share of BTC mining which has grown to about 58% and is much higher than the world average, indicating that the space is actually leading efforts in the right direction.