High funding rates in the futures market are currently affecting Bitcoin (BTC) price performance

After weeks of sideways movement, #Bitcoin managed to gain momentum during Friday’s trading session. The price rose to $61,233 on Coinbase. However, bears don’t seem to have given up yet and Bitcoin price fell below $60,000 again.

Bitcoin trader Byzantium, who generally provides analysis of the market and its fundamentals via Twitter, claims that Bitcoin is still far from its peak and explains that the cryptocurrency’s price action in recent days has been influenced by the futures market.

As shown in the chart below, funding rates have been high. He added:

But high money is only dangerous when the market is driven purely by derivative greed. But, there is also a pretty damn strong bid price. So maybe that's not a problem.

Next, Byzantine General said it was shutting down the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Although the product led to a significant increase in demand for BTC in late 2020 and early this year, it is currently lacking participation.

Bitcoin This is already reflected in the performance of the cryptocurrency. At the end of April, Grayscale will release a large number of Bitcoins "locked" in the product. By then, the demand for cryptocurrency may increase further.

From a fundamental perspective, indicators point to further appreciation. Bitcoin’s hash rate and difficulty are at all-time highs and trending upward, as are miners’ profits and USD trading value. The trader said:

On-chain indicators suggest we are approaching overbought levels. One of my favorites is the contrarian risk, which basically shows long-term holding confidence. It’s getting high, but it’s not “topped out” yet.

Regarding the mining industry, traders concluded that miners stopped selling, resulting in a small outflow of BTC entering the market. In fact, over the past few days, miners have begun to accumulate BTC, which is a highly bullish indicator.

On the other hand, Glassnode co-founder Rafael Schultze-Kraft looked at the metric “coin days destroyed bitcoin”, which measures the number of coins “spent”, and said that it is declining. Schultze-Kraft’s findings are consistent with those of Byzantine Generals, according to which BTC is still far from its peak. He said:

Despite BTC’s price exceeding $50,000, the 3-month CDD is at low levels and has declined recently. Old hands are extremely strong here, with HODLers showing strong conviction and doing everything they can.

Finally, research firm Santiment said the number of whales holding more than 100,000 BTC has increased. The percentage of Bitcoin supply held by whale addresses of 100,000 or more has risen from 0.76% 11 weeks ago to 2.20% today, an 11-month high. Meanwhile, smaller 1k-100k $BTC addresses have fallen from 42.4% to 39.5% in the same 11 weeks.

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