A quant has pointed out a pattern forming in a Bitcoin indicator that could imply the end of the current bull cycle may not be far.
Realized Cap Of New Bitcoin Investors Could Hint At End Of Cycle
In a CryptoQuant Quicktake post, an analyst talked about the historical trend in the fresh capital inflows into the Bitcoin sector and what it might suggest for the current cycle.
The on-chain indicator of relevance here is the “Realized Cap,” which measures the cryptocurrency’s total value by assuming that the value of each coin in the supply is equal to the price at which it was last transacted on the blockchain.
For any coin, its last transaction is likely to represent the last time that it changed hands, so the price at its time could be considered to be its current cost basis. Since the Realized Cap sums of this value for the entire supply, it essentially provides a measure of the total amount of capital that investors have put into BTC.
Changes in the indicator, therefore, correlate to the amount of capital flowing into or out of the market. One way to visualize this is by looking at the trend in the Realized Cap of the young coin-age ranges.
Below is the chart shared by the quant that shows how the percentage of the total Bitcoin Realized Cap occupied by the three youngest age bands has changed over the cryptocurrency’s history:
From the graph, it’s visible that the combined Bitcoin Realized Cap share of the 0 days to 1 day, 1 day to 1 week, and 1 week to 1 month age bands has spiked recently, implying a large amount of the coins were purchased by the investors during the past month.
This naturally indicates increased capital inflows into the sector. As the analyst has highlighted in the chart, BTC has historically seen peak inflows coincide with peaks in the price itself. In the last few cycles, this happened when the Realized Cap of these age bands made up for a much more notable percentage of the market’s total than the current one.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the ongoing Bitcoin bull run is safe. It would appear that the long-term trend in the metric has been that of a decline, with each top occurring at a lower value than the last.
If the downward trajectory is extrapolated for the latest cycle, then the cryptocurrency may not have too much room to run after all. It only remains to be seen when the peak inflows occur, though, as in the past, there were usually multiple spikes before the one that led to the cycle’s completion.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $99,100, up more than 6% over the last seven days.
