CoinMarketCap Academy takes a visual look at some key Bitcoin metrics as we head into the year's end.
Bitcoin Price: 63% drawdown since start of 2022
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/
Bitcoin’s 2022 chart is a sea of red. If you bought BTC in January, you had a last opportunity to get out in April/May — before the Terra/UST collapse crashed the price for good. The fallout from that took BTC to around $20,000, where it traded for a few months before the next leg down from the collapse of centralized exchange (CEX) FTX.
Source: https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/
Bitcoin peaked three times above the 5X’d two-year moving average in bull markets and touched this “upper bound” again in 2021. But its price has now fallen well below its two-year moving average — a tell-tale sign for a bear market. "Experts" on Crypto Twitter are divided as to whether the bottom is in for Bitcoin and the crypto market in general. In the past bear markets, Bitcoin hovered around this range for one to two years. A sign of things to come?
Bitcoin Address Count: Small and mega-large addresses are accumulating
Source: https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-addresses
Looking at Bitcoin holders — through wallet addresses — gives us a glimpse of Bitcoin on-chain activity.
The amount of Bitcoin Shrimp Addresses (those holding less than one bitcoin) has grown by over 3.5 million — almost a 10% increase. Planktons (holding less than 0.01BTC), Crabs (holding 1-10 BTC), and Fish (10-100 BTC) follow a similar pattern. Despite the massive drawdown, smaller holders are more eager than ever to get into Bitcoin.
Source: https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-addresses
A different picture emerges for Sharks (100 to 1,000 BTC) and Whales (over 1,000 BTC). The amount of those addresses decreased by more than 5%, implying that bigger investors may not see Bitcoin as a good investment in times of rising capital costs.
Source: https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-addresses
It’s yet another picture for Mega-Whales (over 10,000 BTC). These addresses mostly belong to exchanges and wealthy individuals, like Michael Saylor, with a big BTC exposure. The amount of Mega-Whales went up by over 20%, which could point to the richest buying bitcoins off those slightly less rich.
Bitcoin Holders: Majority are holding BTC for longer than 6 months
Source: https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-hodl-wave
The percentage of “old” Bitcoin supply (in blue) — those Bitcoins that were last active more than six months ago — remained constant at 75% to 78%. This could imply that the majority of Bitcoin in holding are held for longer than 6 months, and could signify that holders see it as a long-term investment.
Bitcoin Miners: Hash rates are gradually increasing, but miners capitulate
Source: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate
The Bitcoin hash rate — a proxy for network activity and security — was on a gradual uptrend throughout 2022, more than doubling the year-opening 140M terahashes per second (TH/s) at its peak in November (over 300M TH/s).
Source: https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-miners
However, there was a net outflow of miners’ bitcoins since, resulting in a slight dip in the hash rate and the capitulation of the least competitive miners in the market. In conclusion, the miner landscape is undergoing a consolidation period, with an increase in the hash rate forcing less competitive miners out of business.
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