Bitcoin traders in profit remain cautious as market digests Ripple ruling

Price action for the world’s largest crypto asset has so far led to a modest increase in new demand inflow this year as speculation over digital asset regulation churns.

Over the past four weeks, while bitcoin has been range bound between about $29,500 and $31,500, inflows of dollars into crypto-related funds have hit a two-year high at $742 million, according to CoinShares.

To date, the realized price for bitcoin (BTC) rests around $20,430 compared to a market price of $30,000 suggesting market participants remain firmly in profit, data shows.

The Bitcoin Realized Price reflects the cumulative worth of all bitcoin, determined by the price at which they were acquired, divided by the overall number in circulation.

Essentially, if the market price of BTC exceeds its realized price, it typically signifies aggregate profitability for market participants. Conversely, when the market price falls below the realized price, it generally indicates a collective notional loss.

It comes as the number of unique addresses holding at least 1 BTC continues to rise steadily, indicating a willingness to hold the asset among that specific cohort despite regulatory uncertainty following last week’s events.

The Realized Cap, different from realized price, currently hovers just below the $400 billion mark, indicating a consistent influx of capital into the asset throughout the course of 2023, Glassnode wrote in a recent research note.

“Despite BTC setting a temporary yearly price high of $31,700, the market remains extremely quiet,” Glassnode said. Though, the blockchain analytics firm noted, “the market is firmly within a regime of profit dominance.”

While the ruling in the case of Ripple v. SEC was initially perceived as bullish among market participants, given “programmatic” XRP sales were deemed not as securities on secondary markets, the New York court also left some open questions.

Despite rising to fresh highs this year, bitcoin has failed to sustain any further breakouts while the market begins digesting the second half of the Ripple ruling: Institutional sales of XRP, according to the New York judge presiding over the case, are securities transactions.

Open interest for BTC futures contracts remains elevated and has continued to post consistent figures above $4 billion for the past three weeks, Coinglass data shows.

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