Bitcoin Miners Under Pressure, Seem To Be Selling BTC: Bearish For Price

Bitcoin miners onder druk, lijken BTC te verkopen: bearish voor koers

It has been a very quiet week in the crypto market. A few cryptocurrencies were able to rise sharply, but a larger group fell at least as hard or got stuck. Volatility fell to its lowest level in a long time, a sign that investors are still very cautious in this macroeconomic condition. Still, a breakout could follow a long period of low volatility.

However, analysts are strongly divided on whether the breakout will be up or down. There is talk of a possible relief or bear market rally, but there are also fears that it will be short-lived as the macro continues to deteriorate. According to Bloomberg, the probability of an economic recession in the next 12 months is now 100%.

Bitcoin miners are under even more pressure

Bitcoin (BTC) was especially remarkably quiet last week. Initially, the price rose to $19,600, but was rejected there. On Friday, bitcoin briefly dipped to $18,780, but overall, the price has been consolidating just above $19,000 for weeks. The BTC price at the time of writing stands at $19,175 on Binance and $19,450 on Bitvavo. The futures market is also very calm at the moment. Yesterday was apparently the dullest day in two years:

However, there are signs that bitcoin miners may be in trouble. We have been reporting for weeks that miners are under heavy pressure and that pressure continues to increase. Two weeks ago, the so-called mining difficulty already to a new record, but in the meantime the hash rate to grow.

About 11 hours after publication, the mining difficulty will increase again by an estimated 4.1%. That means it gets even harder and more expensive for miners. They are already having a hard time because of the high competition, high energy costs and low exchange rates.

Miners have had to sell their reserves more often in order to keep going and we will probably see that again. However, this sales pressure is bearish for the bitcoin price. Analyst Maartunn reports that miners are already sending BTC from their wallets to exchanges.

Ethereum and the top 10 crypto

Ethereum (ETH) was able to recover somewhat stronger in recent days, so that the price currently stands at $1,308. This puts ETH up 2.6% this week. Still, there are somewhat worrying developments on Ethereum related to censorship:

The strongest crypto in the top 10 (without stablecoins) was polygon (MATIC) last week. The MATIC price is 4.8% in the plus this week and comes in at $ 0.83. However, cardano (ADA), solana (SOL) and ripple (XRP) are down more than 4% this week.

Crypto top 100 hardest fallers and risers

Terra luna classic (LUNC) was one of the biggest losers last week, falling nearly 13%. However, Ethereum name service (ENS) is falling even harder, losing nearly 17% of its value. Axie infinity (AXS) was the biggest loser, falling 18.5%.

Conversely, aave (AAVE) was up 15% last week, casper network (CSPR) up 17%, huobi (HT) up 22% and evmos (EVMOS) up a whopping 28%.

In the past 24 hours, ethereumpow (ETHW) rose 9.5% and klaytn (KLAY) even increased by 10%, but it is newcomer aptos (APT) that is currently stealing the show. The Aptos network launched early last week and APT made its debut on the exchanges a few days later. Initially, APT plunged more than 50%, but today the price is up 30% and is currently trying to capture $10.

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