‘Uptober’ closes at record high in best month of 2021 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week – Cointelegraph

Bitcoin (BTC) sees a volatile start to a new week and a new month after its first-ever monthly close above $60,000 whats next?

After a highly anticipated end to Uptober, bulls are looking to November to provide the next phase of what they hope and sometimes promise will be a BTC price surge like no other.

The timing varies, and so do the predictions. In store for BTC/USD this month could be a monthly close of nearly $100,000 but also a dip to near $50,000.

With everything to play for and solid buyer support in the upper $50,000s holding, Cointelegraph takes a look at what could help shape Bitcoin price action in the coming week.

Regardless of what comes next, market participants are in a celebratory mood this week as Bitcoin sees the highest monthly close in its history.

Not only $60,000 but $61,000 has now become the target to beat for November.

Bitcoin is anything but up only on short timeframes, however, and Sundays close was met with noticeable downside volatility post factum a trip to $59,500 before another surprise took it above $62,000 hours later.

Perhaps slightly nervous are fans of PlanBs worst-case scenario price predictions, these calling for at least $63,000 for the end of October.

While still more or less on track, for the series to continue its historical accuracy, $98,000 needs to be on the table by the end of this month.

For PlanB himself, however, the results have been more than satisfactory.

Yes, Bitcoin might not close above $63K this month, Cointelegraph contributor Michal van de Poppe, meanwhile,added about the situation.

After a correction from overnight lows, BTC/USD is trading at around $62,000. October, then, was its best month since December 2020, with returns just shy of 40%.

Those looking for something that truly is in up only mode need look no further than Bitcoin network fundamentals.

This week, difficulty will put in its eighth consecutive positive adjustment something which has not happened since 2018.

Reflective of the increasingly competitive mining arena, the mining difficulty has now all but made up for the losses it necessarily inflicted after China forced miners to down tools in May.

Difficulty will increase to 21.89 trillion this week, just over 3 trillion below all-time highs.

Thehash rate the measure of processing power dedicated to mining tells a similar story.

Despite being impossible to measure in definitive terms, the hash rate is still trending toward new all-time highs, estimates show.

Raw data trends up and down, and different estimates often end up with considerably different readings. The weekly average hash rate, however, now stands at around 159 exahashes per second (EH/s) closer than ever to the 180 EH/s-record from April.

September provided a golden buy the dip opportunity for Bitcoin buyers, and October was likewise not without its brief retracements.

Did you buy the dip? If you did, you added to the increasingly strong cohort of long-term hodlers whose conviction has only increased in October.

As noted in research from major exchange Kraken last week, the price gains and run to $67,100 all-time highs have failed to tempt hodlers to sell BTC.

Notably, while long-term holders were unfazed by the retracement last month and used it as an opportunity to continue accumulating, this trend has not changed despite a significant rebound in price to new all-time highs near $67,000, researchers concluded.

It is these entities, rather than short-term speculators, who are driving price performance in Q4 this year, they add.

This chimes with a previous analysis, notably by analyst Willy Woo, showing that the so-called hodlers of last resort or Rick Astley investors remain committed to their investment. Among the long-term holders, since 2020, are miners themselves.

Since 2020 miners have been HODLers (and buyers) of BTC, this is a sea change in behaviour, Woo noted this weekend.

On the topic of a supply shock, the picture from exchanges is grim from the perspective of a Bitcoin bear.

According to fresh data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, exchange BTC reserves are now at their lowest in three years.

At that time, in late 2018, Bitcoin was heading into the pit of its previous bear market, which bottomed out in December at $3,100.

Since then, price action has changed by an order of magnitude, but balances are still dwindling all pointing to the scale of the potential shock should demand increase heavily from here.

Exchanges now control 2.47 million BTC. While at its peak in April 2020, over 3.1 million BTC stood on their orderbooks.

Balance changes can vary considerably among exchanges. Over the past 24 hours, for example, Coinbase Pro led the decrease, down almost 20,000 BTC, while some other players saw slight increases in their balance.

The coming week could produce some familiar trends on traditional markets and their traditional knock-on impact on crypto markets.

Related:Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, ETH, BNB, MATIC, FTM

These could come thanks to fresh comments from the United States Federal Reserve on coronavirus management Tuesday and Wednesday as markets expect further cues on asset-buying tapering.

This comes as inflation ramps up worldwide, while Fed Chair Jerome Powell previously admitted that the accompanying narrative supply chain crisis will likely persist well into next year.

I think the Fed has pretty well determined to start the taper pretty quickly. We expect them to announce it next week and then start it soon thereafter, so thats pretty well carved in stone, Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab, told Yahoo Finance last week.

Such conditions serve to increase Bitcoins attractiveness as an inherently deflationary asset class with a mathematically verifiable supply cap.

Institutional inflows into extant Bitcoin investment products, along with the newly launched futures exchange-traded funds (ETF), highlight growing demand.

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'Uptober' closes at record high in best month of 2021 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week - Cointelegraph