What’s Behind The Recent Bitcoin Drop? Here’s What On-Chain Data Says

Keshav Verma

1 year ago

3 mins read

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Bitcoin on-chain data hints that selling from the miners may have been behind the latest plunge in the asset’s price below the $28,000 mark.

Bitcoin Miners Have Shown Signs Of Selling Recently

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, miners had been putting on some selling pressure on Bitcoin while the decline had happened. A relevant indicator here is the “miner netflow,” which measures the net amount of Bitcoin entering into or exiting the wallets of all miners.

When this metric has a positive value, it means a net number of coins is being transferred into the wallets of miners right now. Such a trend implies that these chain validators are accumulating currently, which is naturally something that could be bullish for the price.

On the other hand, negative values suggest miners are transferring some BTC out of their holdings at the moment. Usually, miners transfer out their coins whenever they want to sell them. Hence, negative netflow values can have bearish consequences for the asset.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the 30-day simple moving average (SMA) Bitcoin miner netflow over the past week or so:

The 30-day SMA value of the metric seems to have been quite negative in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant

As displayed in the above graph, the 30-day SMA Bitcoin miner netflow registered a very sharp red spike when the cryptocurrency’s price was in the middle of its decline a few days ago.

BTC was just above $28,000 when this spike came, but the asset rapidly plummeted to the low $27,000 level following it. The timing of these large net outflows taking place from the miners may be a sign that it was this cohort’s selling that at least partially contributed to the coin’s drawdown.

The chart for the 30-day exponential moving average (EMA) Bitcoin miner reserve, a metric that measures the total amount of BTC all miners are holding right now, also shows this spike:

Looks like the value of the indicator has plunged recently | Source: CryptoQuant

This plummet in the Bitcoin miner reserve from a few days ago naturally makes sense, as the netflow is nothing but a measure of the changes taking place in this metric. From the chart, it’s visible that while the outflows may have been sizeable, they still haven’t significantly affected this cohort’s total holdings, meaning that many miners are still sitting still on their wallets.

Nonetheless, compared to the average during the last 365 days, the current outflows are very large, as the data for the 14-day EMA Miners’ Position Index (MPI) below displays.

The metric has shot up | Source: CryptoQuant

It looks like the rate at which Bitcoin miners are selling right now (proportional to the past year) is greater than what even the FTX crash back in November 2022 saw.

All these indicators suggest that this extraordinary selling pressure from these holders could be why BTC plunged to low $27,000 levels a couple of days ago, something that the coin is yet to recover.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $27,300, down 8% in the last week.

BTC has plunged | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Becca on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.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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