Bitcoin’s price is facing ‘extreme fear’ but institutional demand could change that
Bitcoin's monthly losses have now risen to 20%, wiping out a large portion of the asset's gains accrued through October and November.
- The cryptocurrency fear and greed index is currently resting deep in the "fear" region.
- Institutional demand for Bitcoin seems to be rising as usual, with an unidentified whale account adding another 2,700 BTC to its holdings.
- Bitcoin-based Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) recently made their debut on Nasdaq Stockholm.
After briefly scaling past its all important resistance of AUD$72,200, Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation, proceeded to dip once again, currently trading at a price point of AUD$70,685. As a result of this ongoing turbulence, BTC's weekly losses now stand at a sizeable 11.7%.
On 4 December, Bitcoin dropped to a relatively low AUD$65,300, only to make a comeback of sorts. The flagship crypto's ongoing ascent seems to be fuelled by the comeback being made by the US stock market. However, despite this, the crypto greed and fear index – which serves as a solid gauge for market sentiment – currently lies in the "extreme fear" zone.
Also, even after being faced with an increasing amount of volatility in recent days, institutional interest in Bitcoin seems to be high, as is made evident by increasing exchange-traded fund (ETF) volumes. On the subject, Lex Moskovski, chief information officer of Moskovski Capital, pointed out that on 7 December, Purpose Bitcoin ETF recorded its highest ever infow since making its market debut recently, adding: "The demand is here."
Not only that, as per data made available by on-chain monitoring resource BitInfoCharts, it has come to light that a crypto whale recently upped its total BTC holdings by another 2,700 BTC – taking their collective haul to a whopping 118,017 BTC.
Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Notes (ETNs) make their debut in Sweden
With cryptocurrencies continuing to pique the interest of investors across the globe, Nasdaq Stockholm recently revealed that it had allowed 21Shares to officially list 2 of its physically backed exchange-traded notes (ETN) on its platform. The offerings make use of Bitcoin and Ethereum as their underlying assets, thus providing digital currency enthusiasts with yet another avenue to explore this fast-evolving space.
In essence, ETNs are best thought of as debt securities that are designed to keep a tab on the movements of their underlying index of equities and trades across a number of different exchanges.
What lies ahead?
As BTC continued to register substantial monetary losses earlier this week, Ethereum rallied by over 10%, severely outpacing the BTC/USD pair – a move that was also aped by a number of other mid-to-large sized altcoins. As a result, popular independent cryptocurrency analyst Michaël van de Poppe opined that a major "alt-season" may be upon us and that these coming few weeks may be the best period to buy various altcoins.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
