One reason why bitcoin is struggling to move up is the bitcoin futures market. The futures market opened Dec 18, literally the peak of bitcoin. Looking at the COT data, we can see that bitcoin has always been in a negative net position. Which means there has always been more short positions than long postions. Below is the data collected since April which shows a bearish bias.
Long | Short | Net
1103 | 1341 | -238
1347 | 1682 | -335
1551 | 2072 | -521
1402 | 1658 | -256
1695 | 2095 | -400
1701 | 2078 | -377
1835 | 2278 | -443
1754 | 2311 | -557
1740 | 2206 | -466
1824 | 2201 | -377
1829 | 2174 | -345
1848 | 2271 | -423
1728 | 2137 | -409
1921 | 2252 | -331
2070 | 2494 | -424
2500 | 3074 | -574
2248 | 2785 | -537
1932 | 2383 | -451
2278 | 2577 | -299
2270 | 2625 | -355
1981 | 2510 | -529
1887 | 2354 | -467
Now, these aren't massive positions but the one thing to notice is the consistency of the positions. There hasn't been a large increase or decrease, which mirrors bitcoin of late as it has been very steady without much volatility. Considering there haven't been massive amounts of shorts added, my feeling is that bitcoin will start to move back up towards 25k. But I wouldn't start buying until I see a positive net or large amounts of longs being added.
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