Last week, Bitcoin (BTC) closed at around $37,350, up 0.8% from the previous week’s closing value of $37,000. It started with notable volatility, with the price of BTC falling to $34,800 on Tuesday, followed by a strong recovery, with the price reaching almost $38,000 on Wednesday. Then BTC fell again to $36,000 on Thursday. The latter part of the week saw an increase and BTC closed the week at around $37,350.
The dominance of BTC, which measures Bitcoin’s market capitalization relative to the entire digital asset market, recovered after two consecutive weeks of decline to stand at around 52.6%. This represents an increase of 0.3% compared to the previous week, indicating a slowdown in the distribution of liquidity across the market after two weeks of robust momentum in the altcoins sector.
The recent surge in altcoin performance is confirmed by an analysis of the Total3 metric, which considers the total market capitalization of the top 125 altcoins. This metric currently stands at approximately $416.1 billion, marking the highest level since August 2022. It underlines the substantial positive momentum in the overall market, following a robust rise led by Bitcoin and the ETF Spot story in recent months , which has brought the market capitalization close. to levels not seen since the UST and Luna collapse, which led to a significant downturn in early May 2022.
Confirming the uptrend, several BTC metrics are showing strong momentum. Currently, approximately 80% of addresses holding Bitcoin are making profits, illustrating robust accumulation during the 2022 recession. Only roughly 20% of addresses have an average purchase price above $37,000, confirming the high probability of a bottom forming in 2022. This accumulation of long-term holders over short-term holders is typical of the final phase of a bear market, where cycle bottoms are established. This is further supported by BTC supply which has not changed over the past twelve months and currently accounts for 70.2%, which is indicative of the long-term commitment of most investors. Additionally, the Bitcoin Illiquid Supply metric, which measures supply in wallets with minimal spending history, has reached an all-time high of 15.4 million BTC. This is consistent with the previous assumption, which reflects a recent increase in the number of long-term holders who did not sell their assets during the 2022/2023 recession, but instead continued to accumulate, demonstrating minimal activity associated with selling BTC in their wallets.
Research into BTC’s on-chain activity reveals positive trends. The number of daily transactions, calculated on a seven-day average, approached nearly 575,000, and the total volume of BTC on-chain transactions is at a level not seen since late June. Transaction fees remain relatively high at $4 to $5, showing an overall upward trend in on-chain activity beyond centralized exchanges and financial products. This indicates a harmonious growth of structural activity and interest across different investor cohorts.
Recent reports turn attention to mining and indicate that Tether, the issuer of USDT, plans to invest $500 million in mining, with the aim of acquiring approximately 1% of the total hashrate and a position among the top 20 mining companies to secure. Notably, Energy Strategic miners managed to reduce their average direct BTC production costs by 35% in the third quarter, from $21,100 to $13,800, as reported by BitVeria. This data underlines significantly stronger profitability in the mining sector compared to the challenges experienced in 2022 and part of 2023.