We will start with some facts and then proceed to our analysis.
Miners must sell in order to cover the huge expenses of electricity and overhead of those enormous facilities they run in the middle of jungles or abandoned villages in places where electricity is cheap, usually in the middle of Asia or Russia.
Last month we had nothing more than outflows in market, tether alone took out 1 billion cash from the system, I repeat 1billion, and the ones that follow the crypto market closely would understand what a huge effect this should have, for the history last time tether injected into the system 100m btc rallied 200-300usd.
Everyone is numbed and waiting in the sidelines something big to happen in order to trigger a big rally or a big drop.
Also last few days we stated to see this walls in the orderbook of bitmex
Daily trading volumes have been decreasing
So trying to combine all those facts, we come to the conclusion that market is controlled mostly by big miners, they are adjusting the pace of theirs selling supply in order to keep price stable just above their marginal cost plus a proper profit margin. Have you ever wondered why btc has been stabilized above those levels, and not above or below...see the average mining cost and you will have the answer!
So this is not actually bad thing, as always market is trading around an equilibrium (a good read is Soros book about reflexivity, here a post about this view I just googled https://www.ft.com/content/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a, but highly recommended to read his book ), so some powers always have a say on that, either central banks in fiat currency or miners in the crypto world, I know I am gonna hear a lot of debate opinions but feel free to comment below.
As long as miners are going to control the supply, the price can only move if demand increases, there are a couple of drives to that but the most important are mass adoption and institutional money.
Mass adoption takes time and we are in the very beginning, so this cannot have a big effect, I think that last year we saw the top at 20k, and it will take us many years to go above IF ONLY driver was mass adoption.
The second factor, institutional money is preparing to enter the market and this should and will have tremendous effect. BUT there should be some prerequisites for this to happen, and the most important is a way to enter this OTC market in a proper "regulated" tunnel. This could be the american ETF of course that we expect sometime next year, or some big exchanges that will open and will be controlled by trusted fiduciaries, for example Fidelity is ready to go on with such a move. More other well trusted institutions are preparing too.
To sum up, we dont expect some dramatic change in prices to the upside if none of the above 2 critical factors happen, and the easiest way is prices to stay here or a bit lower, but just above the marginal cost of the miners. It would take something very very big to happen for this situation to change, to the negative or to the positive.
With all that said I expect your comments below!