Growth Of Bitcoin ETFs & Other Instruments Doesn’t Support Supply Shock Narrative

Data shows while the Bitcoin supply present on exchanges has been trending down, growth in other investment vehicles like ETFs and WBTC has been making up for this drop.

Bitcoin Exchange Reserves Decline, But ETF And Other Instruments Enjoy Growth

As per the latest report from Arcane Research, BTC exchange reserves have seen significant decline this year, but the growth in newer investment instruments like ETFs has made up for it.

The “exchange reserve” is an indicator that measures the total amount of Bitcoin currently stored in wallets of all exchanges.

Traditionally, this supply on exchanges has been considered the available trading supply of the coin. So, when the indicator’s value moves up, it’s taken as a bearish sign for the coin’s price. On the other hand, a decrease may imply bullish trend.

The trend with the exchange reserve has been that of constant decline since half a year now. Because of this “supply shortage”, many traders believe in a bullish outcome for Bitcoin in the long term.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Bullish Signal: Open Interest Shows Strong Trend Up

However, the report seems to suggest a different story. Here is some data that shows the percentage of the circulating BTC supply in different segments:

Looks like most sectors have seen growth in the past year | Source: The Arcane Research Weekly Update - Week 50

As you can see in the above graph, while the exchange supply has gone down, growth in other segments seems to more than make up for this decline.

Related Reading | Despite Crackdown, Bitcoin Mining Is Still Alive And Well In China

The exchange traded investment vehicles now hold 0.69% more supply than last year. This shows that there is increasing demand for trading Bitcoin through the familiar means (like ETFs). This trend may also indicate rising adoption from institutional investors.

With a 0.98% increase this year, BTC on the Ethereum network now accounts for 1.73% of the total circulating supply.

The report notes that both these sectors are important factors for Bitcoin’s price discovery, and so growth here may not support the popular idea that a supply shock is brewing in the crypto due to declining exchange reserves.

By the way, corporate treasuries now hold 0.91% of the circulating BTC supply. Microstrategy has been the main push behind this growth.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $48.8k, up 1.5% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 16% in value.

Below is a chart that shows the trend in the price of the crypto over the last five days.

BTC's price seems to have surged up in the past couple of days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView Featured image from Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Arcane Research

by Hououin Kyouma on December 23, 2021 at 12:30AM