What it’s going to take to hit $100K

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

---

$100,000 is just out of reach right now. 

We saw some resistance on Friday as bitcoin touched $99.8k before backing down, which isn’t really a surprise when you look at how much bitcoin could be sold just on Coinbase once we hit the elusive record.

In an X post, Galaxy’s Michael Novogratz said this amounts to “normal profit taking” as Alex Thorn’s data shows that a lot of the sellers came in this year above $56,000, and are looking to offload. 

Despite this being a holiday week for folks in the US (which, on the Wall Street side of things, generally means that volumes are slightly lower), there may be a reason to be bullish on hitting $100k. 

And, to no one’s surprise, all roads lead back to MicroStrategy. The firm, in an SEC filing this morning, announced that it purchased 55,500 bitcoin — worth $5.4 billion — at the end of last week into the weekend at an average price of nearly $98,000 per bitcoin.

The filing was actually kind of expected, given that we knew a big purchase was on the horizon after it announced at the end of last week that it closed its bond offering. And that came after it was upsized to nearly $3 billion from an initial $1.75 billion.

The most recent purchase comes on the heels of a $4.6 billion buy earlier this month. That means — if you’re looking at the math — we’ve seen Saylor’s company buy up $10 billion worth of bitcoin this month alone. Wild, right? 

While Saylor’s purchases are catalysts for price action, it’s not looking like it’s enough to send us over $100k just yet, but perhaps it’ll help folks breach the wall that’s currently in place. 

After all, there’s one other trend that shows we could break $100,000 sooner rather than later. According to FalconX’s David Lawant, there have been a few notable liquidity shifts in the market. 

Source: FalconX

“BTC reached its highest spot volume print ever on a seven-day moving average basis and for the first time since 2021 is in shooting range of doing the same on the futures side. While spot volumes on the week after the election brought the daily traded value to above $40 billion, over the past week it was slightly lower at $25-35 billion but still two to three times the levels we have been seeing between March 2024 and the election,” Lawant wrote. 

However, the volume jump hasn’t led to an increase in book order depth, which would together lead to a “stronger” impact on price action. 

Source: FalconX

Essentially, this data shows that $100,000 remains a tough level to break through, but “the overall picture remains encouraging,” according to Lawant. 

If MicroStrategy’s buy isn’t enough to send us over the wall, perhaps we’re just a CZ post away.

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
• Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
• Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
• 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
• Lightspeed: All things Solana.
• The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
• Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.