A key Bitcoin price metric is signaling that top traders are
comfortably positioned and expect BTC to secure the $50,000 level in the
short term.
Bitcoin (BTC)
price posted a 25% gain after this week’s news of Tesla’s $1.5 billion
BTC investment came out. Prior to this reveal, BTC was lagging behind
Ether’s (ETH) performance by 7.5% but the numerous bullish events of the past few days helped BTC to hit a new all-time high at $48,900.
Previous
to Tesla’s announcement, BTC price was trading in the $30,000 to
$41,500 range for nearly 3 weeks and once the price broke out one would
expect pro traders and arbitrage desks to follow the bullish trend.
Rather
than flipping long, many of the top traders opened short positions as
BTC commenced its 25% move. This seems risky given that this week
Bitcoin received praises from JPMorgan’s co-president and regulators approve a BTC ETF approval in Canada.
Historical
data shows that Bitcoin price actions tend to trade in tandem with
Ether, which has been strongly bullish for months. Adding to this
bullish scenario, Bitcoin's Lightning Network announced a record node count and the total value locked (TVL) surpassed $42 million.
Mastercard also announced that it would support cryptocurrency payments on its network by the end of 2021.
These bullish signals contrast with the long-to-short net positioning metrics provided by major cryptocurrency exchanges.
This
indicator is calculated by analyzing the client's consolidated position
on the spot, perpetual and futures contracts and it provides a clearer
view of whether professional traders are leaning bullish or bearish.
It
is important to note that there are occasional discrepancies in the
methodologies between various exchanges, so viewers should monitor
changes instead of absolute figures.
Since
Feb. 8, when the Tesla announcement took place, exchanges' top traders
have kept their net positions relatively unchanged.
Before
Bitcoin's 25% rally, Binance had a 1.33 ratio favoring longs, which is
in line with the previous week. This indicator peaked at 1.53 on Feb.
10, but has since then returned to 1.31.
On the other hand, Huobi
top traders had a 0.74 indicator ahead of Feb. 8, which remained flat
for three days. On Feb. 11 as BTC rallied from $44,000 to $48,000, these
traders began increasing net longs, reaching the current 0.80. Although
this level is still favoring net shorts by 20%, it remains above the
0.75 level from Jan. 29.
Lastly, OKEx top traders held a 14% net
long position before the Tesla news came out. Although they've reverted
to a 47% net short position on that same day, over the last four days
the indicator has come back to 1.03. Currently, OKEx traders remain well
below the 52% net long position from two weeks ago.
Staking could be capturing top traders
Top
traders could have also moved their BTC off-exchange in search of
better yield opportunities. Therefore, assuming that they've entered
short positions solely by monitoring centralized exchanges' could be a
brash conclusion to reach.
As things currently stand, the
long-to-short indicator does not show extreme net long positions from
arbitrage desks, market makers, and whales. A balanced derivatives
market suggests that there’s ample room for buying activity if BTC
continues to rally to $50,000 and above.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/key-bitcoin-price-metric-signals-traders-are-positioned-for-50k-btc
