US Job Openings declined by 1.1M in the month of August, signaling a softening job market that hasn't yet affected unemployment.
Last week saw a 14% decline in mortgage applications, which is the seasonally-adjusted lowest level of demand for mortgages in the 21st century.
The equity market has seen a bounce this week, but Treasuries and the US Dollar is signaling that this is more likely to be a countertrend rally than a true bottom.
Spot bitcoin price has also seen a bounce this week, but nothing significant enough to fundamentally change current price structure.
On-chain fundamentals still show Bitcoin is incredibly cheap despite the slight bounce this week.
Bitcoin Volatility Index has been relatively low signaling that we could be due for a big move soon
Long term holder supply has remained incredibly inactive; a behavior that aligns with bear market expectations.
Positive perpetual futures funding rate and an all-time high in perpetual futures volume relative to market cap signals that traders are anxiously awaiting a price rip.
Bitcoin Mining in Kenya is Reducing Consumer Energy Costs by up to 90%.
Bitcoin's network hash rate is soaring.
Will Bitcoin see another miner capitulation wave during Q4 2022?
Don’t be lulled to sleep by the sideways price action of the past few months. BTC is in a range of incredible value right now and it won’t remain that way forever.
Lightning network continues to grow and that is incredibly bullish. The lightning network destroys any claim that Bitcoin is too slow to be used as a medium-of-exchange. Bitcoin scaling as a viable, day-to-day, medium-of-exchange will incentivize more individuals, businesses, and nation-states to adopt it.
It is very encouraging to watch this layer 2 scale during a bear market. This is more proof that Bitcoin's core user base is religiously convicted; combine that with a limited supply of 21,000,000 and the long term path is obvious.
Bitcoin Mining
In the depths of this bear market, hash rate continues to shock many as the next projected difficulty adjustment is expected to be significantly higher. This strong growth in hash rate can be attributed to three key reasons.
New generation machines coming online (S19XPs and M50S)
Less power curtailment compared to this summer
Inefficient miners selling their rigs and getting them plugged back in by a more efficient miner (from miner capitulation this summer)
If the macro environment deteriorates further, it would be reasonable to expect the price of BTC to make new lows and the weak remaining miners to be purged yet again causing another miner capitulation. If Bitcoin hovers around $20k for the rest of 2022, we may see the weakest miners slowly drop off the network as more and more new-gen rigs get plugged in, but it is still likely that hash rate will trend up.