BTF - Bitcoin Strategy ETF Learn More → | WGMI - Bitcoin Miners ETF Learn More → | Valkyrie's Opportunities Around GBTC Learn More →
Investors celebrated the New Year by raising a glass to the conclusion of a difficult 2022, where controlling inflation dominated economic activity and continued to stifle growth into 2023. Fortunately, after hiking Fed Funds by over 400 bp last year, a terminal rate close to 5.00% is near, allowing the general economy to finally absorb the impact. This is likely to be reflected by labor indications, consumer activity through the holidays, and inflationary metrics across various sectors. The Fed continues to convey the same message on inflation and use any means to combat further rises, which some think may push the economy into recession if not done with delicacy.
Economic releases start the year off fast with the FOMC meeting minutes to be released Wednesday, followed by Friday’s release of December’s unemployment rate, which is expected to remain unchanged at 3.7%. Focus will remain on jobs as strategists call for unemployment to rise to the 4.5-5.0% level by the end of year, despite remaining at its current level for the majority of last year. CPI will be released next Thursday, January 12th, with surveys expecting a drop to 6.7% from 7.1%, with core CPI to fall in similar fashion. Oil and energy related futures have continued to trend lower which has helped ease living costs for those consumers now entering into the teeth of winter.
Finally, equities and interest rates experienced a historically bad year with the S&P 500 down almost 20% and the tech heavy Nasdaq Composite down about 33%. Interest rates followed Fed Funds with the 10-year rising 150%, or about 225 bp, settling closer to 4%. Higher rates mean pain for the housing sector, dependent as it is on financing. And while all related housing metrics declined over the year, expectations remain negative for at least the first half of the year, with no pivot yet in sight.
The Bitcoin network turned 14-years-old this week, maintaining 99.9% uptime since inception on January 3rd, 2009. Regardless of Bitcoin price, volatility, exchange blowups, or deleveraging events, blocks have continued to confirm approximately every 10 minutes. Miners however had a rough 2022 as mining profitability declined to record lows. As hashrate is added to the network, the block reward becomes harder and harder to obtain. Additionally, Bitcoin price declining 65% on the year severely squeezed miners further as the block reward was worth less and less. Evidence of miner stress over the past 6 months is further seen in miner BTC balances. Historically, miners have held or accumulated BTC in the good times and sold BTC in the lean times. BTC net outflows from miner related wallets reached an extreme in November but have shifted to accumulation over the past week. This may suggest miner stress has abated, at least in the near term.
From a price perspective, most trend technicals remain bearish to neutral. Price also sits within a multi-month bearish pitchfork. Trend technicals have largely remained bearish for the entirety of 2022. The good news is a trend shift will likely be cut and dry, if and when a trend shift occurs. The key resistance level stands at $20,000, from both a technical and psychological level. As volatility continues to collapse, a significant move becomes more and more likely over the next few weeks. Since Bitcoin trading began, price has had a series of extreme volatility expansions and contractions. Now post-FTX collapse, this volatility pop will likely be no different.
Stablecoin dominance (SD), relative to non-stablecoins, can also help elucidate broader sentiment in the market. Stablecoins entered the scene in the form of Tether (USDT) in 2014, with several more launching in 2018. Stables allow for increasing transferability and convertibility of fiat currencies to cryptocurrencies, and they also can act as a potential hedge against market volatility. Over the past year, unsurprisingly, SD has continued to grow, and remains near all-time highs. SD should begin to fall if and when risk-on sentiment returns in 2023.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__hssrc | session | This cookie is set by Hubspot whenever it changes the session cookie. The __hssrc cookie set to 1 indicates that the user has restarted the browser, and if the cookie does not exist, it is assumed to be a new session. |
AWSELB | session | Associated with Amazon Web Services and created by Elastic Load Balancing, AWSELB cookie is used to manage sticky sessions across production servers. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
CookieLawInfoConsent | 1 year | Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cf_bm | 30 minutes | This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. |
__hssc | 30 minutes | HubSpot sets this cookie to keep track of sessions and to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. |
bcookie | 2 years | LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. |
bscookie | 2 years | LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. |
lang | session | LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. |
lidc | 1 day | LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. |
UserMatchHistory | 1 month | LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
AWSELBCORS | 5 minutes | This cookie is used by Elastic Load Balancing from Amazon Web Services to effectively balance load on the servers. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__hstc | 5 months 27 days | This is the main cookie set by Hubspot, for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session). |
_ga | 2 years | The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors. |
_ga_HB5P757H6F | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. |
_gat_gtag_UA_202302885_1 | 1 minute | Set by Google to distinguish users. |
_gid | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |
at-rand | never | AddThis sets this cookie to track page visits, sources of traffic and share counts. |
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
hubspotutk | 5 months 27 days | HubSpot sets this cookie to keep track of the visitors to the website. This cookie is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts. |
undefined | never | Wistia sets this cookie to collect data on visitor interaction with the website's video-content, to make the website's video-content more relevant for the visitor. |
uvc | 1 year 1 month | Set by addthis.com to determine the usage of addthis.com service. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_fbp | 3 months | This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. |
fr | 3 months | Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. |
loc | 1 year 1 month | AddThis sets this geolocation cookie to help understand the location of users who share the information. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt.innertube::nextId | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
yt.innertube::requests | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
AnalyticsSyncHistory | 1 month | No description |
li_gc | 2 years | No description |
loglevel | never | No description available. |
pum-1717 | 1 month | No description |