Bitcoin, Ethereum Lack Volumes To Justify Caps, Says Santiment

Keshav Verma

Last Updated: June 11, 2024 11:13 am

3 mins read

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Data from Santiment reveals both Bitcoin and Ethereum currently lack the trading volumes to justify their market caps.

Bitcoin And Ethereum NVT Ratios Are Both Bearish Right Now

According to the on-chain analytics firm Santiment, both the bitcoin and ethereum networks will need to see a pickup in activity this year. The relevant indicator here is the “Network Value to Transaction” (NVT) ratio, which measures the ratio between the market cap of any crypto and its transaction activity.

Usually, the trading volume is considered as the transaction activity of a coin, but Santiment’s NVT ratio works differently. Instead of dividing the market cap by the volumes, this version of the metric makes use of the “daily circulation,” a measure of the total number of unique coins that have seen some movement in the past day.

The advantage of the circulation indicator is that transactions, where the same coins jump through several wallets, are only counted once towards the measurement, while the normal trading volume metric would have counted them as many times as they were transferred. This helps eliminate duplicate transactions and gives a more accurate idea about the market activity.

Now, what the NVT ratio tells us is how the market cap of Bitcoin or Ethereum currently compares against the activity on the respective networks. High values of the metric suggest the volumes are much lower than the cap right now, and hence the coin may be overvalued at the moment. On the other hand, low values suggest the price may be undervalued.

Now, here is a chart that shows where the NVT ratio has been valuing Bitcoin and Ethereum during the past few years:

The value of the metric seems to have been bearish for both the coins recently | Source: Santiment

As the above graph shows, the NVT ratio has been bearish for Bitcoin since August 2022. This means that in the last few months, the circulation on the BTC network has remained pretty low when compared to the market cap of the crypto.

For Ethereum, the indicator’s value had been switching between bearish and bullish throughout 2022, but the coin seems to have ended the year being overvalued as the circulation was bearish in December.

If the cryptos continue to be overvalued according to the NVT, then a correction may be imminent for them. “The circulation rate of both networks need to pick up in 2023, and this week will be telling as non-holiday days begin,” explains Santiment.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $16,700, down 1% in the last week.

Looks like BTC has surged in the last couple of days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from mana5280 on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Santiment.net

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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