Bitcoin prices have traded within a volatile consolidation range this week, opening at a weekly low of $37,333, rallying to a high of $45,039, and then giving back the majority of the gains, trading at $38,900 at press time.
According to data analysts Glassnode’s weekly newsletter, as the global macro and geopolitical stage, the war in Ukraine being the obvious centerpiece, continues to create uncertainty in markets, Bitcoin bulls attempt to set a price floor. Bitcoin continues to consolidate around the $38k level as the bulls have been absorbing a modest but persistent sell-side pressure for over two months now, largely sourced from by short-term holder divestment.
“With prices trading sideways in recent weeks, a relative equilibrium has been established. However, given the limited incoming fresh demand, this delicate balance can be disrupted by any significant degree of seller exhaustion, or conversely a re-invigoration of sellers,” the newsletter reads.
Meanwhile, data from IntoTheBlock shows that bitcoin is still trading with a high correlation to the stock market, at the same time as commodities prices are skyrocketing. However, bitcoin’s correlation with precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum is showing its lowest correlations since August of 2021.
Number of daily active addresses is on a steady rise
One of the more positive trends is that the number of daily active addresses is on a steady rise. This metric is not necessarily the same as daily active users, but it’s still a strong indicator that crypto is being adopted to a greater extent by the day.
The daily active addresses metric is the sum count of unique addresses that were active in the network, either as a destination or source of a ledger change, on a particular day. According to data from Coin Metrics, Bitcoin (BTC) daily active addresses amounted to 953,100 addresses on average the past week, up 9.1% from the previous week. At the same time, Ethereum daily active addresses went up to 590,900, an increase of 2.1%.
Another positive indicator of growing activity is the amount of stablecoins issued. The total current supply of stablecoin is $155.9 billion, as per data from Coin Metrics. Of the total supply, $47.2 billion is USDC on Ethereum, $39.8B is USDT on Ethereum, $38.7B is USDT on Tron, decentralized DAI issuance is $9.4 billion and Binance’s BUSD amounts to $18.0 billion.
Number of NFT transfers on Ethereum is rising
Finally, the sum count of ERC-721 NFT transfers on Ethereum, which provides a temperature check for the NFT market as a whole, is up 6.1% from the week before to 338,900 transactions. One reason for this may be the exceptionally low gas fees we see on the Ethereum network at the moment. The mean transaction fee in U.S. dollars last week was $13.3, levels not seen since August last year.
At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $38,900 after recovering slightly in the beginning of the week. Bitcoin is up 0.4% on the daily, but down about 10% on the week. Zooming out, bitcoin is down 43.3% since the all-time-high price of $69,044 on the 10th of November.
Ether (ETH) is trading at $2,580 at press time, trading slowly upwards since yesterday. Ether is up 0.6% in the past 24 hours, and down 11.5% on the week. Since its all-time-high at $4878 on the 10th of November last year, ether is still down almost 47%.
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