At the October 10 Wall Street open, trading was flat, with one trader predicting that it would not be until October 12 that volatility would begin to affect price.
Hourly candlestick chart BTC/USD (bitstamp). Source: TradingView
“A reliable recipe for high volatility”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD trading at $19,300 at the time of writing.
The pair held steady in a tight lane over the weekend, with only one $19,000 test marked by steady conditions.
With the week set to be a big boost for a potential volatility breakout, Michael van de Poppe, founder and CEO of Trading Eight, suggested traders could get another 48-hour period.
He summed up the day: “Markets will probably remain flat until we get all the economic data on Wednesday and Thursday.”
However, Van de Poppe reiterated that in terms of moving, the movement of bitcoin should be “quite big.” He pointed to the historical volatility index for bitcoin (BVOL), which is currently at a rare low that has only been seen a few times before.
“Historically, this has been a sure recipe for massive volatility,” he wrote in part in an explanatory tweet.
Meanwhile, October 13 was a public red day for analysts when the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September was released.
At the time of writing, US stocks have been mostly quiet, with the S&P 500 down 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.1%.
Material Indices, a source of current online analysis, said the macro data will cause direct changes in both volatility and market participation.
“Reports on earnings, CPI, unemployment and retail sales will boost both cryptocurrency market indicators,” she tweeted today.
An earlier post by the founder of Material Indicators, a materials researcher, showed that volatility and the number of trades reached their lowest level in a year.
In a separate sign of a brewing storm, the US Dollar Index (DXY) rallied again during the day, making up most of the ground lost after reaching its highest level since May 2002.
US Dollar Index (DXY) – 1-day candlestick chart. Source: TradingView
DXY was at $113.31 on the day and peaked on September 28 at $114.77.
The hash rate is maintained when the difficulty reaches a new all-time high.
Meanwhile, two weeks after its installation, a gigantic difficulty adjustment resulted in a 13.55% increase in Bitcoin’s main goal.
On the topic: Biggest increase in mining difficulty in 14 months – 5 things to know about bitcoin this week
Despite economic pressure on miners due to falling spot prices, the move was the biggest positive adjustment for the Bitcoin network since May 2021.
At the time, the boom was short-lived, with consecutive losses accompanying market jitters as the exodus of miners from China began.
An overview of the basics of the Bitcoin network (screenshot). Source: BTC.com
At the time of writing, the hash rate for the network was estimated at 260 Exahs per second (EH/s), and MiningPoolStat’s network monitoring data set an all-time high of 289 EH/s on September 5th.
