Bitcoin Hash Ribbons Form Capitulation Signal: What It Means

Keshav Verma

1 year ago

3 mins read

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On-chain data shows the Bitcoin Hash Ribbons have recently gone through a crossover. Here’s what it could mean for the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Hash Ribbons Suggest Miner Capitulation Is On

As explained by CryptoQuant community manager Maartunn in a Quicktake post, miners are capitulating right now if the Hash Ribbons indicator is to be believed. This on-chain metric is generally used to determine whether miners are in distress.

BTC runs on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism where miners play the role of validators and compete against each other using computing power to get a chance to add the next block to the chain.

This computing power, when measured across the network, can provide insight into the health of the miners as a whole. Due to this reason, the Hash Ribbons indicator makes use of this total Bitcoin “Hashrate” to judge the situation of the miners.

Naturally, a rise in the Hashrate suggests the network is attracting miners right now, while a decline could imply low profitability is making some of these validators pull out from BTC.

The Hash Ribbons indicator uses two moving averages (MA) of the Hashrate, 30-day and 60-day, to represent whether these behaviors are particularly intense or not at the moment. When the 30-day ribbon moves under the 60-day one, it suggests that miners are mass capitulating. On the other hand, the opposite cross suggests network is observing growth again.

Now, what relevance do these trends have for Bitcoin? According to Charles Edwards, the creator of the Hash Ribbons, the miners have historically been quite resilient, and they only quit when things get especially bad for the cryptocurrency. As such, the market may be more likely to approach a bottom whenever these chain validators show capitulation.

Below is a chart that shows how the miners’ behaviour has looked recently according to this indicator:

quicktake-image — Looks like the two ribbons have gone through a cross recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As Maartunn has highlighted in the graph, the Bitcoin Hash Ribbons have seen a crossover recently. More specifically, the cross has involved the 30-day moving under the 60-day, implying that the miners are capitulating.

Miner profits come down to three factors: BTC spot price, transaction fees, and electricity costs in the area that they are located in. Historically, the fees has been quite low in comparison to the block rewards, so miner financials have been dependent on the price (as the block rewards only have this variable attached to them) and electricity prices.

Recently, the BTC price has been stuck in consolidation while the block rewards have been slashed in half in the latest Halving event. This has led to tightening revenues for these chain validators, so it’s not surprising to see that the miners with the least efficient machines have already started ditching the network in hordes.

In the chart, past instances of miner capitulation are shown with the green lines. It’s visible that while miner capitulation has generally indeed occurred near profitable buying points into the asset, these bottoms haven’t immediately appeared after the crossovers have occurred. As the analyst notes, “It unfolds in the subsequent days and weeks after less efficient miners throw in the towel.”

BTC Price

Bitcoin has continued to move overall flat over the past week as its price is still trading around $62,700.

Bitcoin Price Chart — The price of the asset appears to have seen a small surge over the past day | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Vasilis Chatzopoulos on Unsplash.com, CryptoQuant.com, chart from TradingView.com

Keshav Verma

Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021.

Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to.

In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career in Physics, but the onset of COVID led to a shift in plans. The virus meant that the college classes had to be delivered in the online-mode and with it came free time for him to explore other passions.

Initially only seeking to make some beer money, Keshav unexpectedly landed clients offering real projects, after which there was no looking back. Writing was something he had always enjoyed and to be able to do it for a living was like a dream come true.

Keshav completed his Physics degree in 2022 and has been focusing on his writing career since, but that doesn’t mean his passion for Physics has ended. He eventually plans to re-enter university to obtain a masters degree in the same field, but perhaps only to satiate his own interest rather than for using it as a means to find employment..

Keshav has found blockchain and its concepts fascinating ever since he started going down the rabbit-hole back in 2020. On-chain analysis in particular has been something he likes to research more about, which is why his NewsBTC pieces tend to involve it in some form.

Being of the science background, Keshav likes if concepts are clear and consistent, so he generally explains the indicators he talks about in a bit of detail so that the readers can perhaps come out having understood and learnt something new.

As for hobbies, Keshav is super into football, anime, and videogames. He enjoys football not only as a watcher, but also as a player. For games, Keshav generally tends towards enjoying singleplayer adventures, with EA FC (formerly FIFA) being the only online game he is active in. Though, perhaps due to being ultra-focused on the game, he is today a semi-pro on the EA FC scene, regularly participating in tournaments and sometimes even taking back prize money.

Because of his enthusiasm for anime and games, he also self-learned Japanese along the way to consume some of the untranslated gems out there. The skill didn’t merely remain as just a hobby, either, as he put it to productive use during his exploration for small-time gigs at the start of COVID, fulfilling a couple of Japanese-to-English translation jobs.

Keshav is also big into fitness, with agility and acceleration-related workouts making a big part of his program due to the relevance they have in football. On top of that, he also has a more traditional strength based program for the gym, which he does to maintain an overall fitness level of his body.

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