BTC Touches $50k, ETF Inflows Accelerate
Market Update
- Monday morning picked up right where yesterday left off, with BTC surging toward $50k, momentarily touching the key level across several exchanges. The rally appears to be driven by spot market demand, as evidenced by a significant spike in spot volume while funding rates remain muted (see chart below). A substantial portion of this volume is likely entering the market via spot ETFs chasing the positive weekend price action. Concurrently, ETH is making strides toward recouping the $2600 level, and Bitcoin's Layer 2 solution, STX, is experiencing a massive rally alongside BTC. The rally is broadening out, with ETH Layer 2 projects like ARB -0.15% , OP, and IMX witnessing over a 5% increase. This surge occurs despite rising rates, the DXY moving higher, and gold declining in response to an increase in real rates. Equity indexes continue to rally, posting gains across all sectors thus far today. This is a crucial macro week, with a CPI release tomorrow and PPI and Consumer Sentiment on Friday. Additionally, Coinbase is slated to report earnings this week, marking its first earnings announcement post-ETF launch.
Source: Velo
- The robust price action observed at the US market open underscores the mounting demand for spot BTC ETFs. Net aggregate ETF flows continue to accelerate, with Friday having witnessed net inflows exceeding $540 million. There was a modest $52 million in outflows from GBTC, most of which was likely due to a rotation into lower-cost products. Since the ETFs' inception a month ago, the total aggregate net inflows have impressively reached $2.7 billion. Leading the charge, BlackRock and Fidelity have both seen over $3 billion in total inflows, underscoring their dominant positions in the market. Looking ahead, Bitwise and Ark are emerging as the next contenders in the race to $1 billion in USD inflows, with total inflows currently standing at $785 million and $919 million, respectively.
Source: Farside Investors, Fundstrat
- Launched on February 1st, Puffer Finance has quickly ascended to become the second-largest liquid restaking protocol on Ethereum, with a remarkable $850 million in total value locked (TVL). This platform allows users to deposit ether and obtain a liquid staking token, thereby enabling yield through ETH staking and restaking. A significant contributor to Puffer Finance's swift increase in TVL has been a points program that increases user engagement due to the implicit promise of a future token airdrop. From a technical perspective, users have been attracted to Puffer due to their anti-slashing tool aimed at reducing the risk of slashing for validators. The growth of Puffer Finance highlights the increasing demand and burgeoning enthusiasm for restaking. This development represents one of the major potential medium-term tailwinds for Ethereum. It is expected to generate demand for ETH from those seeking to leverage Ethereum's security to safeguard other chains and earn additional yield while doing so.
Daily Technical Strategy
Mark L. Newton, CMT
Head of Technical Strategy
There is no new daily technical commentary today. Below is the note from Friday, which is still relevant, particularly given the strong price action observed through the $49k level today.
Following nearly two weeks of sideways consolidation, Bitcoin has begun to climb rapidly again, with Friday's gains above $47281 representing the highest potential daily close since Spring 2022. While momentum has been jump-started by gains over the last couple days, a level of strong resistance looks to be nearing which could come into play near $49,000, levels that roughly coincided with the intra-day peaks made back in January. Until this level can be surpassed, its thought that $49k-$49.1k should represent an important level for BTC which might result in a slowdown of the rally since last month. Wave structure, at present, seems to show this move having progressed in three waves higher, which could either represent a corrective bounce, or possibly extend into a five-wave advance back to new 2024 intra-day highs. Given that cycles show a possible consolidation happening in BTC through March into April before bottoming near the Halving, it's thought that $49k could represent a solid level of overhead resistance. However, if exceeded with little or no consolidation, then it would be right to expect that five waves higher are playing out from last month's lows. Moreover, this would allow for a quicker move back to test $69k with consolidation proving minimal and short-lived. At present, i feel mid-February might represent a temporary area of time and price-based resistance for BTC. However, it's right to watch how prices react near $49k in the days ahead for more proof on either an immediate breakout, or whether consolidation will be necessary.
Daily Important Metrics
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All metrics as of February 12, 2024 1:08 PM
All Funding rates are in bps
Crypto Prices
| Symbol | Market Cap | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
 BTC | $978B | $49,841 | ↑ 3.26% | ↑ 18% | |
 ETH | $314B | $2,615 | ↑ 4.18% | ↑ 15% | ↓ -3.08% |
 SOL | $48B | $110 | ↑ 1.27% | ↑ 8.23% | ↓ -9.78% |
 ADA | $20B | $0.5633 | ↑ 3.54% | ↓ -4.96% | ↓ -23% |
 LINK | $12B | $20.65 | ↑ 2.46% | ↑ 38% | ↑ 20% |
 DOGE | $12B | $0.0824 | ↑ 0.61% | ↓ -7.43% | ↓ -25% |
 DOT | $9.4B | $7.34 | ↑ 1.93% | ↓ -9.51% | ↓ -28% |
 MATIC | $8.4B | $0.8720 | ↑ 3.03% | ↓ -9.19% | ↓ -27% |
 NEAR | $3.5B | $3.35 | ↑ 4.76% | ↓ -7.01% | ↓ -25% |
Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)
| Symbol | Premium to Nav | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
| GBTC | ↑ 0.85% | $37.25 | ↑ 4.78% | ↑ 1.09% | ↓ -17% |
| BITW | ↓ -37% | $24.10 | ↑ 3.88% | ↓ -1.87% | ↓ -20% |
| ETHE | ↓ -12% | $19.73 | ↑ 4.50% | ↑ 1.39% | ↓ -17% |
| BTCC | ↑ 0.04% | $8.07 | ↑ 3.46% | ↓ -1.34% | ↓ -19% |
News
QUICK BITS
CoinDesk Solana's Second Phone Crosses 100,000 Presales, Securing $45M for Development Solana Mobile's "chapter 2" smartphone could ship in early 2025. |
The Block Jito's initial governance cohort will include individuals from Coinbase Cloud, the Solana Foundation and its own community. |
MARKET DATA
CoinDesk Ethereum Validator Entry Queue Signals Renewed Interest in Staking The validator entry queue has jumped to 7,045, the highest since Oct. 6, according to data source ValidatorQueue. |
The Block Ethereum transaction uptick sees network gas fees hit multi-month high Ethereum transaction volume has increased since the beginning of February, with network gas fees now at a multi-month high. |
CoinDesk Digital Currency Group Reports Q4 Revenue of $210M, Up 59% Y/Y (Full Text) Fourth quarter EBITDA was $99 million versus a loss of $7 million a year earlier. |
DOSE OF DEFI
The Block Puffer Finance hits $850 million in TVL, now second-largest liquid restaking protocol Ethereum users have flooded into Puffer Finance in less than two weeks due to the lure of a potential airdrop. |
WEB 3.0
The Block Polygon Labs wants to help convert EVM blockchains into validiums via ‘type 1 prover’ Polygon introduced the type 1 prover, enabling EVM chains to adopt zero-knowledge scaling technology. |
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