Bitcoin and Ethereum started off the week with modest price rises, with the king coin trading at $30,424.97 while the top alt was changing hands at $2,077.09. That being said, prices are only half the story. Both BTC and ETH have seen dramatic movements in the past week, and there’s a lot to unpack.
Just go with the flow
CoinShares’ latest weekly flows report from 16 May revealed: “record weekly inflows for this year” with Bitcoin bearing most of it. However, while BTC saw inflows of around $299 million, ETH saw outflows of close to $27 million.
About Bitcoin, the report suggested that investors were looking for safety and security. Meanwhile, the report observed,
“Ethereum continued to see outflows totalling US$27m last week, this has been a steady trickle out this year with outflows now reaching US$236m, representing a substantial 2.6% of total AuM.”
Bottoms up?
Data from Glassnode revealed that BTC’s NVT signal reached a four-year low. Why does this matter? The NVT metric shines a light on how investors are valuing an asset. The lower it goes, the closer we are to a market bottom. Adding to that, many investors probably have dip buying on their minds.
? #Bitcoin $BTC NVT Signal (7d MA) just reached a 4-year low of 245.719
View metric:https://t.co/NIjFezJMgN pic.twitter.com/eQf0Bybcto
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) May 17, 2022
Also, investors have started HODLing their ETH, as Glassnode data made it clear that addresses holding more than 10 ETH reached a 16-month high.
? #Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 10+ Coins just reached a 16-month high of 289,240
View metric:https://t.co/6ggy1nLbSD pic.twitter.com/Q1f1YMM2l3
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) May 17, 2022
On the other hand, a report from Santiment insights noted that in spite of ETH recently seeing some of 2022’s highest trading volumes, people were looking to exit. About ETH, the report stated,
“While we saw a nice drop in supply on exchanges for the past year or so, May 1st 2022 saw a huge increase in supply on exchanges as folks rushed to exit their positions, which is clearly reflected on the price itself.”
So, how’s the vibe over in Camp Bitcoin? According to an update from Arcane Research, daily transaction volume rose by an impressive 76%. However, this could have originated from FUD. Furthermore, the rise in volume came along with a fall in daily miner revenue.
Overall, while there may be positive signs of adoption for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can’t deny that a lot of investors’ actions are driven by fear.
