The Bitcoin price witnessed another week of indecisive action, bubbling between the consolidation range of $105,000 and $110,000. The premier cryptocurrency briefly broke above the $110,000 mark on Thursday, July 3, but failed to hold above the psychologically relevant threshold on the day.
Despite the price resilience of Bitcoin, the market inactivity of a certain class of investors known as retail investors has persisted over the past few weeks. According to the latest on-chain data, the absence of this investor cohort is leading to a rare phenomenon on the Bitcoin network.
What Does An Almost Empty Mempool Mean?
In a July 4 post on the X platform, Alphractal CEO and Founder Joao Wedson revealed that the Bitcoin network is currently witnessing a period of low activity. This trend of minimal blockchain activity has led to an uncommon phenomenon where the Mempool is almost empty.
For context, the mempool refers to a temporary storage area where pending BTC transactions wait to be confirmed. The mempool is typically congested during periods of elevated on-chain demand and network activity, as several transactions await processing.
However, recent on-chain data from Alphractal shows that most transactions have been confirmed, leaving the mempool almost empty. The relevant on-chain metric here is the Bitcoin Mempool Transactions, which looks at the number of BTC transactions in the mempool at a given time.
According to Joao Wedson, this occurrence is a clear sign that retail investors have stayed out of the market over the past few months — as the almost nonexistent backlog reflects reduced demand for the Bitcoin network. Hence, a future increase in the mempool transactions could mean a return of retail demand to the market.
Impact On Bitcoin Price
Typically, low transaction activity and an almost empty mempool are not a good sign for the price of BTC, as it reflects low demand from retail investors. However, there is no denying the shift in the market since the launch of the spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETF)
As Bitcoinist reported earlier, the Bitcoin price has managed to remain steady despite the low retail demand, thanks to institutional players and spot ETF investors. The BTC exchange-traded funds, for instance, look set for their fourth consecutive week of positive capital inflows.
As of this writing, the price of BTC stands at around $107,700, reflecting an almost 2% decline in the past 24 hours. According to data from CoinGecko, the flagship cryptocurrency is up by almost 5% in the past two weeks.
