Aug. 6, 2024

CoinDesk 20 Index: 1,782  +8.8% 
Bitcoin (BTC): $54,931  +6.4% 
Ether (ETC): $2,448  +8.0% 
S&P 500: 5,186.33  −3.0% 
Gold: $2,455  +2.2% 
Nikkei 225: 34,260 +10.24%

A message from Radix

Bitcoin regained $56,000 during the Asian morning amid a broader recovery following Monday's rout. The wider crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), is nearly 8% higher than 24 hours ago. Solana's SOL led the gains, adding nearly 13% to trade around $137. XRP and DOGE have risen by around 7.5% and 11.8% respectively. BTC subsequently pulled back to trade around $55,000, some 7% higher on the day. “We might see a corrective rebound in Bitcoin's price,” Ruslan Lienkha, chief of markets at YouHodler, told CoinDesk in a Tuesday email. “However, this increase will likely be limited due to the prevailing pessimism in the broader markets.”

Spot ether ETFs saw nearly $49 million of inflows on Monday, even as the ETH price dropped as much as 20%. Ether suffered its biggest single-day drop since 2021, as Jump Crypto moved large amounts of assets to exchanges ahead of potential sales. Professional investors appeared to buy the dip, however, with ETH ETFs trading over $715 million, the highest since July 30. The ETFs remain in the red, however, having recorded net outflows of $460 million since their introduction. Their bitcoin equivalents, in comparison, saw over $1 billion of inflows within their first 12 days.

ARK Invest took advantage of the market slump to buy $17.8 million of Coinbase shares and $11.2 million worth of Robinhood's. The purchases were ARK's first of COIN since June last year and its first of HOOD since February. Coinbase stock lost 7.3% on Monday while HOOD dropped 8.17%. ARK Invest often loads up on shares when their prices slide, usually with a view to offloading them once their prices recover. The company aims to avoid having one particular holding accounting for a weighting of more than 10% of any of its ETFs, which drove much of its COIN sales in recent months.

Bitcoin may have had a horrible August so far, but investors could take encouragement from at least two indicators.

The first is call-put skew on the Deribit exchange, which remains flat-lined above 3, according to data provider Amberdata. A positive skew indicates a preference for call options, which are bullish, over puts, which are bearish. The bullish long-term pricing is consistent with some observers' view that once the initial shock from global market volatility dissipates, bitcoin will regain ground.

The second indicator is the cumulative volume delta (CVD) as tracked by Kaiko. The CVD is the total difference between the volume of trades executed at the ask price (buying) and trades executed at the bid price (selling) over a specific period. A rising positive CVD indicates that buying volume exceeds selling volume, while a falling and negative CVD indicates otherwise.

The CVD on Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken has mostly held positive since Aug. 1, indicating net buying pressure or bargain hunting during price losses.

- Omkar Godbole