Thursday, August 22, 2024

BTC’s poor post-halving performance, the political drums get louder, some panel takeaways

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” – Bertrand Russell  ||

Hey all! I hope the summer is treating you well.

By now you’re probably tired of my gripes about my recording system (me too!) and the irregular recording schedule, so I’ve made some decisions!

I’m not going to record every newsletter – much of what I write doesn’t adapt well to speech, and it is a considerable undertaking that I’m not convinced delivers much benefit. Nor am I going to embed recordings in the send, as they make the emails heavy and Substack flashes green banner warning signs at me.

Rather, I’m going to upload audio separately, only 2-3x a week for now. This isn’t going to be called a “podcast” because, heck, everyone has a podcast and I don’t want to add to the noise. Rather, this is Crypto is Macro Now Audio, it’ll be on a separate tab on the Substack space, and you will (after a couple of episodes) be able to download episodes on your podcast player. First episode coming soon.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• What post-halving performance?

• The political impact drums get louder

• Real Vision panel takeaways

If you’re not a subscriber to the premium daily, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! You’ll get unique content, interesting links and my eternal gratitude - and there’s a free trial!

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

What post-halving performance?

We know that BTC generally has lacklustre summers, especially after halvings. But it turns out that so far in this cycle, BTC is doing even worse than expected. This chart by glassnode shared in the Arca newsletter (which I totally recommend, and it’s free) shows that the leading crypto asset is enduring the worst post-halving performance on record, despite support from the ETFs.

(chart via Arca)

And, according to the Fear & Greed chart, there are most likely more disappointing if not outright negative times ahead.

(chart via Arca)

A contrarian signal, as in “buy when others are fearful”? Maybe, but also maybe not.

I’ve been hearing talk of a potential short squeeze, since BTC futures trades have in aggregate been bearish over the past few days. (Red = negative funding rates, relatively rare, which implies there’s more demand for positions betting BTC goes down than BTC goes up.)

(chart via coinglass)

But I’m not convinced there’s enough negativity to support that. BTC open interest has been climbing in BTC terms (to strip out the price effect), but it’s still lower than the July highs.