As the bear market continues to linger, several market analysts have pointed out key metrics or factors that show that the Bitcoin bull market might not be far off. This time, Bloomberg analyst Jamie Coutts has identified key Bitcoin adoption metrics that provide bullish signals to the crypto community.
What Are These Key Bitcoin Metrics?
In a tweet shared on his X (formerly Twitter) platform, Coutts noted that “HODLers” and transactions on the Bitcoin network were at an all-time high. According to the update he shared, the number of addresses holding more than 1 BTC is at its highest over the last five years.
In the past month, there has also been close to a 1% increase in persons holding more than one 1 BTC. Meanwhile, the volume of Bitcoin transactions, entity-adjusted ones, has surged by over 9% in the past month. This metric also has a 99.8% percentile over the last five years.
These two metrics form part of key metrics used to determine how widely the Bitcoin network and token are adopted. Their being in the green is undoubtedly bullish, especially considering that many have been said to have left the crypto market because of the lingering conditions.
The first metric shows that more addresses are accumulating BTC, and a significant chunk of it, even though the crypto token has been tepid for a while now. The entity-adjusted metric is even more significant as it measures the number of unique Bitcoin users rather than active wallets.
However, there are some negatives from the Bitcoin on-chain update that Coutts laid out. The value of this entity-adjusted bitcoin transactions has dropped by over 30% in the past year (although it is up by %30 in the last three years). The median transfer value has also decreased drastically (over 98% in the last three years), putting it also in the bottom percentile over the last five years.
This shows that the economic value of the network is down even though adoption is currently at an all-time high.
BTC price looks strong above $26,000 | Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview.com
Worrying Concerns Around Bitcoin’s Adoption
There has been increased institutional interest in the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, especially with traditional fund managers moving to offer several Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). However, following this interest, many have become wary about the true intentions of these fund managers and how they could make Bitcoin more centralized.
These concerns are likely to be further fueled by a recent revelation made by Coutss. In a tweet released on September 26, he pointed out that three asset managers (Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street) are major investors in the three biggest publicly traded mining companies.
While he stated that his statement shouldn’t be taken as FUD, he raised concerns about what this could mean for the Bitcoin network as these fund managers account for “about 8.9% of the global hash.”
According to him, there might be the risk of “creeping influence that might conflict” with the network’s values. He believes these companies could go as far as censoring transactions with such influence.
This development is more significant because BlackRock is one of several fund managers that have filed to offer a Spot Bitcoin ETF.