Bitcoin Positions are Plunging with a Lack of Direction

Ever since falling to nearly $10,000 level at the beginning of this month, bitcoin hasn’t been doing much. Over the weekend, we went to $10,600 only to get back down to $10,200. And today again, we made a move to $10,540.

At the time of writing, BTC/USD has been trading at $10,485 in green with $1.3 billion in ‘real’ volume.

Bitcoin is basically consolidating within a narrow trading range while on-chain volume slowly trends up, making higher highs.

Trader Josh Rager is waiting for bitcoin to reclaim $11,900 and close above to be bullish until then, he remains neutral.

Some are bullish still as trader Galaxy says the “trend is still bull,” and when the leading digital asset starts grading to $14,000, it will drag the altcoin market up with it.

Meanwhile, some analysts also remain bearish.

"Why aren't you long then?"

Because the weekly is still ragingly bearish and I trust that more than the daily.
Still not gonna ignore the daily setup so I reduce, but it's not enough to make me macro bullish.

— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) September 14, 2020

In the mining world, unlike the price, the hash rate is making new all-time highs; today, the 7-day average hit a peak at 129 EH/s. Meanwhile, bitcoin miners are spending 10% of all of their fees on transactions to deposit BTC on centralized crypto exchanges. According to data provider, Glassnode, “This is a 2x increase since the beginning of the year, and levels we haven't seen since late 2017.”

The Positions Fell

In the futures market, crypto exchange OKEx’s September contracts are actually trading at a small discount to spot.

This past week, the futures volume also experienced a decline with the total open interest remaining under $4 billion. On the CME, open interest fell sharply from 11,617 to 8,198, hitting its lowest level since early July 7.

Dec20 28k, 32k, 36k calls among the most active #bitcoin options contracts yesterday pic.twitter.com/NO0lytBTTu

— skew (@skewdotcom) September 14, 2020

As Bitcoin fell by over $2,000, so did the positions on all types of accounts on CME. Long Positions in leveraged funds notably plummeted from 4,271 to 2,758, while short positions fell from 6,842 to 4,661. OKEx noted,

“Leveraged fund accounts had repeated profits after increasing their short positions last week, but the current position reductions reflect their uncertainty about Bitcoin's price direction.”

Slow & Steady Wins the Fight!

Last week was a lackluster one, but we could see an “obscenely green rocket start of the week,” as per trader and economist Alex Kruger. In the stock market, “from Wednesday on it will be up to the Fed to let the party continue. Quite a few IPOs this week could help fire up risk appetite,” he added.

The real party starts when king BTC breaks $20k.

— Qiao Wang (@QwQiao) September 14, 2020

For now, however, $10,000 is the king – the most important psychological for the leading digital asset. As analyst Mati Greenspan noted,

“In its short history, bitcoin has significantly crossed the level of $10,000 a total of five times. It has used this same level as a turning point (support and resistance) the same number of times.”

According to him, should BTC hold this level and “shoot straight for the moon,” it is a real possibility we could see another bubble. As such, “maintaining this steady incline would arguably be the more level headed course for a level headed asset.”

Bitcoin (BTC) Live Price