Bitcoin has started the new quarter within the same price range as recent days and continues to fluctuate between $82,000 and $85,000. The cryptocurrency's price briefly crossed the $85,000 mark in recent days, but buyers could not hold that level. U.S. economic data on inflation came in lower than expected, reducing pressure from the possibility of a Federal Reserve rate hike, but this factor was not sufficient for Bitcoin's continued ascent.
According to ITNA citing CoinDesk, one of the most important constraints on growth was the state of spot Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. faced a net outflow of $148.7 million on Wednesday, ending a nine-day inflow streak. That period had attracted a total of $3.08 billion in capital and was the longest dollar-value inflow streak into Bitcoin ETFs this year.
However, the pace of inflows into ETFs had already slowed before the end of that streak. The largest daily inflow on September 21 was nearly $1 billion, and after that, capital flows gradually weakened. Based on the analysis presented in the report, for Bitcoin's upward move to continue, ETF demand needs to be reinforced.
Another indicator of interest is the Bitcoin Absorption to Emission Ratio (BAER). This index compares the amount of Bitcoin purchased by ETFs with the roughly 450 BTC that miners produce daily. This ratio fell from 25.6x on September 21 to 1.8x on September 29. To absorb supply in the $84,000 to $86,500 range, this ratio would need to rise again to about 5x.
Conditions are different in the altcoin market. Stacks (STX) token has gained about 25 percent in 24 hours, and tokens such as Lit (LIT), Just (JST), and ENA (ENA) have also increased by more than 5 percent. However, gains in the altcoin market are not broad-based or uniform.
In the derivatives market, Bitcoin open interest has decreased from $21.8 billion to $20.9 billion, and the funding rate in most markets has remained near 3 percent annually. Also, about $100 million of trading positions were liquidated over 24 hours. Binance's liquidity map data also highlights the $84,800 level as one of the important levels if the price continues to rise.