BTC is about to have its first weekly close above $60,000 at the end of today, weeks after plenty of analysts were calling for a bear market. There are voices on CT saying that we're far from entering bear territory and my gut feeling tells me they're right. We haven't had a proper mania phase yet.
Altcoins are not doing too good lately, as most have lost value on their BTC pairings. It is probably clear by now for most of you who's buying Bitcoin lately and why. If not, I give you one hint: it's not retail.
It is supposed that the first Bitcoin futures ETF approved in the US will start trading as of tomorrow and that's what pushed Bitcoin, and holding it, at $60,000 levels. Retail is still in a coma unfortunately...
Just checked the google trends search term for "buy Bitcoin" and it is resting at 12 points out of 100 maximum(corresponding to the peak of 2017).
Now that says two things, considering that usually retail money is searching for "buy Bitcoin" on google: individuals are either not yet interested in buying Bitcoin atm or they already know how to do that and don't search on google anymore.
Bitcoin is gradually becoming the asset of the rich, although it was designed to be empowering the individuals across the world, truth is though that the so called whales are always outsmarting minnows when it comes to investing and Bitcoin is no exception in that regard.
I helped a friend of mine to buy some BTC the other day and although he only bought some worth $70 in the initial phase, he then asked me to help him buy more, now owning $180 worth of crypto. That's a sign that we're heading towards the mania phase of the bull market.
It also says a lot about "the state of Bitcoin". It kind of already belongs to the Michael Saylors and other big names affording to buy a lot at these prices. Now that we will have a BTC futures ETF trading as of tomorrow in the US, the demand coming from institutional players will increase...
We had our chances though, no doubt about that, the thing is that the significant buyers atm are definitely not retail, like it was back in the 2013 and 2017 bull market, thus we might have a "different cycle" this time when patterns will simply fail.
Thanks for attention,
Adrian