Bitcoin’s Realized Cap Adds $43 Billion Since the 2017 Peak to Hit A New ATH; A 60% Increase

While the price of bitcoin is struggling around $10,000, although still holding strong to the key psychological level, Bitcoin realized its cap has hit an all-time high.

Compared to the $197 billion market cap of the leading digital asset, which takes into account the current price and circulating supply, the realized cap has reached $115 billion.

Realized cap values each coin at the time they were last moved, as such, serving as an estimate for investors' aggregate cost basis. This metric eliminates some of the lost, unclaimed, unused coins from the total value or “an indicator of the sum of levels where groups of long-term, legit, buyer-hodlers entered into their Bitcoin positions, with local and immediate emotions and manias stripped out.”

Since BTC price hit the peak at $20,000 in 2017, the realized cap has grown by a whopping $43 billion, an increase of 60%.

Source: Glassnode

Meanwhile, on the price front, after falling to $10,150 level yesterday, today we are back around $10,400, the pre-drop level. Traders are expecting this correction to extend further to fill the CME gap at around $9,700.

“Bulls want to reclaim $11.2k. Bears want to see price below $10.2k,” noted one trader.

Interestingly, despite the selling pressure, there has been a lack of aggressive liquidations, and the bitcoin futures curve has been flat for much of this month.

Most #bitcoin perpetual swaps trade at a discount to spot leading to negative funding prints across exchanges pic.twitter.com/O7gjvwdfTb

— skew (@skewdotcom) September 24, 2020

Meanwhile, unlike spot and futures trading volume that remains subdued with the total open interest on bitcoin futures also falling to $3.8 billion, OI on bitcoin options reclaimed its ATH before the expiry of 88,000 contracts this week.

#bitcoin options total open interest briefly reclaiming all-time-high before blockbuster expiry Friday of 88k options pic.twitter.com/tWPsSgjX0a

— skew (@skewdotcom) September 23, 2020

What needs to be noted is these pullbacks are nothing new for the bitcoin market. As we have reported, during the last bull cycle, Bitcoin had several pullbacks of 30 to 40%.

Moreover, historically, September hasn’t really been a bullish one for the digital asset. Not to mention, the macro environment is also at play here, with the Supreme Court Justice seat vacant now after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, delayed stimulus, and Presidential election just a month away.

While a stimulus before the elections is unlikely to come, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell argued for Congress to do more to support the economic recovery the same as Charles Evans, Chicago Fed president.

Quarter four of 2020 can bring a new wave of gains as it has been historically a green month, and after a pullback, the digital asset is expected to recover the losses and surge higher.

“BTC ranges between 10k and 11k for the rest of the year. This would be amazingly bullish,” said analyst Wolf.

Bitcoin (BTC) Live Price