原文作者:Glassnode Ding HAN, UkuriaOC, CryptoVizArt, Alice Kohn, Glassnode
原文来源：insights.glassnode
Executive Summary
- After the fourth Bitcoin halving, there was a sell-off in Bitcoin, with the price of Bitcoin falling to $57,000, but then quickly recovered. This is the deepest pullback since the FTX low.
- Ethereum's price behaved similarly, experiencing the largest drawdown of the cycle, which was twice as severe as Bitcoin.
- Ethereum's poor performance in this cycle compared to Bitcoin is reflected in a noticeable lag in speculative interest among short-term holders.
- The realized market capitalization of the two assets linked to long-term holders remains low, suggesting that the market may still be in the early stages of a macro uptrend.
💡 Check out all the charts in this week's report.
Price performance
Bitcoin halving events are often publicized well in advance and have historically been volatile "sell news" events in the short term. The fourth halving was no exception, with the price of Bitcoin falling by 11% and trading in the $57,000 area. This is the lowest price in the last two months, although the market has returned to a sideways state since the halving date.
Curiously, prices were flat for two weeks after the first two halving cycles, with only an 11% increase after the first halving. Generally speaking, the 60-day price performance after the halving event will be volatile, moving sideways, with a slight downward trend, around -5% to -15%.
- 🔴 2nd Era: +9.0%
- 🔵 Era 3: +0.4%
- 🟢 4th epoch: -1.5%
- ⚫ 5th epoch: 0.3%
Real-time workbench
Ethereum's price felt a similar gravity, with Bitcoin falling immediately after the halving and recording its worst post-halving performance ever. However, in the following days, the price of Ethereum also recovered, turning the overall performance into positive territory.
- 🔵 Era 3: +16%
- 🟢 4th epoch: -4%
- ⚫ 5th Era: +1.5%
Real-time workbench
From the all-time high (ATH) of $73,000, the Bitcoin price corrected by -20.3%, which is the deepest correction since the closing low of FTX in November 2022. Still, this macro uptrend shows a historically resilient side, with a relatively shallow correction so far.
It is worth noting that we can observe a striking similarity in the retracement structure between the current cycle and the 2015-17 bull market (blue). The uptrend of 2015-17 occurred in the early days of Bitcoin, when no derivatives were available for this asset class. As a result, the rally is entirely driven by the spot market, which may indicate that the current market structure may be somewhat similar.
During the 2020-22 cycle, a lot of leverage was washed out of the market in 2022, and new US ETFs added a non-trivial new demand vector to the spot market.
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For Ethereum, we can see a similar retracement structure, with a significantly shallower correction since the FTX lows. This indicates a certain degree of resilience during pullbacks, as well as a net reduction in volatility across the digital asset space.
However, it is worth noting that Ethereum's deepest drawdown in this cycle was -44%, which is more than double Bitcoin's -21% drawdown. This highlights Ethereum's relative underperformance over the past two years, which is also reflected in the weaker ETH/BTC ratio.
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The investor's position
To compare the relative performance between Bitcoin and Ethereum, we can look at the Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) metric. Comparing NUPL allows us to see how profitable Bitcoin and Ethereum investors are compared to the average on-chain cost basis for each asset.
A major threshold for this indicator is NUPL > 0.5, which usually corresponds to a breakout of new all-time highs and a move into a frenzy phase. A NUPL value above 0.5 means that the unrealized profit held by the investor exceeds 50% of the asset's market value.
Amid the hype and rally surrounding the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the unrealized profits of Bitcoin holders have grown much faster than Ethereum investors. As a result, Bitcoin's NUPL indicator exceeded 0.5 and entered the euphoria phase three months before the corresponding indicator for Ethereum.
Real-time workbench
The short-term holder group is made up of investors who have purchased Bitcoin in the last 155 days and is often seen as a proxy for the needs of new investors. Typically, the average purchase price of this group acts as a strong resistance in a bearish trend and a support zone in a bullish trend.
This theory still holds true so far this week, with the Bitcoin market correcting below the $59,800 STH-cost base, where it found support and rose higher. Historically, retesting of the cost base for short-term holders is common in uptrends and provides key levels to monitor potential inflection points when they fail to sustain.
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We can likewise assess Ethereum's short-term holder cost base, which has provided support on multiple occasions during this uptrend. Ethereum's STH-MVRV is currently trading slightly above the cost price, which could indicate that the spot price is very close to the cost base of recent buyers, who could panic in the event of downside volatility in the market.
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Growing divisions
Speculation increased significantly in the early period when Bitcoin reached its all-time high (ATH) on March 14. Specifically, the wealth of USD held in the coins transferred over the past 6 months is close to $240 billion, which is close to an all-time high, and we observe the accumulation of capital by short-term holders.
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However, Ethereum's trend has not been reflected, and it has not yet been able to break through the all-time high of 2021. While Bitcoin's short-term realized capital is almost as high as the last bull run, Ethereum's short-term realized capital has barely risen from its lows, indicating a clear lack of new capital inflows.
In many ways, this lack of new capital inflows reflects Ethereum's poor performance relative to Bitcoin. This may be due in part to the attention and access that spot Bitcoin ETFs bring.
The market is still awaiting the SEC's decision on the expected approval of a series of Ethereum ETFs by the end of May.
Real-time workbench charts
We can take a similar approach to analysis, focusing on long-term holders, and we note a significant decline in the 2-3 year group. Some of them are transferred to the 3 to 5 year age group for coins acquired 3 years ago (May 2021), but the rest indicate profit-taking and withdrawal.
This may have been influenced by the ETF approval, with most of the divestments taking place in February 2024, when the market was on the rise, about a month before Bitcoin reached its current all-time high of $73,000. Historically, these long-term holders have waited for strong demand inflows to profit when the market is strong.
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For Ethereum, we continue to observe the continuous holding behavior in the group for 1 to 3 years. It seems that due to Ethereum's current poor performance, experienced investors are patiently waiting for higher prices.
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If we examine the selling volume in the profits of long-term holders, we can see that Bitcoin holders who have held for 6 months to 2 years have increased their withdrawals during the all-time high.
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From this perspective, it seems that long-term holders of Ethereum are still waiting for better profit opportunities.
Real-time workbench chartsTo 💡 view these charts and more, visit our new dashboard suite:- Bitcoin: Short-term holder profit breakdown
- Ethereum: Short-term Holder Profit Breakdown - Bitcoin: Single-period long-term holder profit breakdown
- Ethereum: Single-period long-term holder profit breakdown
As we discussed in Week 8 of the chain's last report, capital inflows into Ethereum (ETH) tend to lag behind relative to Bitcoin (BTC). In the 2021 cycle, new capital inflows to Bitcoin peaked 20 days earlier than Ethereum. We can monitor the rotation of capital between these two assets by assessing the change in the realized market capitalization over a 30-day period.
In this example, we break down this indicator into short-term and long-term holders. For both assets, the short-term holder variable peaked before the 2021 cycle peak. This year, the realized market capitalization of short-term holders of Bitcoin peaked near a new all-time high, while Ethereum's related metrics barely rose.
Real-time workbench charts
For the long-term holder variable, both assets saw relative maximums near the apex of the second cycle. This is a very different explanation, as it takes at least 155 days for the capital to reach the status of a long-term holder (LTH).
Thus, this indicator depicts buyers who bought bitcoin at its high point in the first quarter of 2021, subsequently bought Ethereum, and held it until the peak of October-November 2021. These buyers may be those who withstood the sales pressure during the bear market in 2022 and contributed to it.
Real-time workbench charts
Summary and conclusions
The market behavior around the fourth Bitcoin halving was very similar to previous cycles, with the price temporarily falling to $57,000 before rebounding to overall flat. The Ethereum market has followed a similar trajectory, however several indicators show that ETH is underperforming relative to BTC.
When we analyze the capital flows and rotations between BTC and ETH, we can see that Bitcoin gets the lion's share of the inflows, which may be driven in part by US spot ETFs. Short-term holders and speculation seem to be focused on Bitcoin, which so far has been quite weak in terms of spillovers with Ethereum.
Disclaimer: This report does not provide any investment advice. All data is for informational and educational purposes only. No investment decision should be made based on the information provided herein and you are solely responsible for your own investment decisions.