From CoinDesk · By Omkar Godbole
This is an excerpt from CoinDesk newsletter 'Daybook.' Sign up here, if you haven't already.
Bitcoin BTC$83,775.50 and the other majors are lower today, but zoom out and the picture is flatter than the daily tape suggests: prices have gone essentially nowhere over the past two weeks.
The choppy trading is a part of a typical stair-step rally, according to some observers, and it could soon pave the way for a move above $87,000.
The question is what would turn that pause into a firm break above the range. The answer sits in what drove the September surge: large spot ETF inflows.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs attracted roughly $2.6 billion in September, with the week ended Sept. 25 alone accounting for about $2.39 billion of the monthly tally. Inflows peaked at nearly $999 million on Sept. 21. Since then, however, demand has cooled sharply, with ETFs drawing $241 million last week and just $28 million so far this week.
“I read the current move as evidence that the ETF bid that carried September has not yet returned strongly enough to offset renewed macro pressure. ETF inflows above roughly $300 million a session for several sessions (my threshold rather than a market one) would be an important signal that institutional demand is returning,” Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, said in an email.
Martin Lee, head of content and data insights at DWF Labs, said large daily inflows matter more than extended inflow streaks that cumulatively bring in only a few hundred million dollars.
"Looking across the year, we've had 93 out of 190 (48%) trading days be negative while still seeing net $1.2B of inflows. Longer-term (week/month) size of flows is more important compared to daily, which is almost a coin flip this year, but definitely something worth monitoring to see how the situation progresses," he said.
Meanwhile, other types of buyers are accumulating.
"Investors appear to be using periods of weakness to accumulate and dollar-cost average alongside institutional buyers," Paul Howard, senior director at Wincent, said. "Many market participants are continuing to target Bitcoin at $100k+." Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today's activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today. For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's Crypto Week Ahead.
What’s trending
U.S. government moves over $100 million in BTC and BNB. A sale hasn't been confirmed (CoinDesk): Wallets supposedly linked to the U.S. government 833.599 BTC, worth about $71.6 million, to two addresses Arkham doesn't label. A separate government-labeled wallet sent about 40,285 BNB, worth $31.63 million, to another unlabeled address.
Bitcoin dips below $84,000 as oil jumps on Iranian tanker attacks (CoinDesk): Bitcoin fell about 1.5% to just above $84,200 as of Wednesday Asian morning hours as oil climbed on stepped-up Iranian attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, lifting Treasury yields and the dollar.