Crypto’s Bullish & Bearish Macro Signals, Bitcoin & Ethereum’s Technical Picture

Hello and welcome to Crypto Corner. This is your host, Nathan Peterson. I'm the director of uh derivatives research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Uh today I just wanted to take a look at uh what seems to be kind of a pushpull bullish versus bearish uh dynamic that's going on right now with uh crypto overall but Bitcoin in particular. So if we start on the bull side of the equation, first of all, seasonality right now is, you know, historically in Bitcoin's limited history of roughly 17 years here. Historically, this has been one of the most bullish seasonal periods for the price of Bitcoin. that being October being one of the best months, Q4 being seasonally bullish, and the four-year cycle uh where if you look at the the four-year having cycle around this time frame uh seasonally is that uh the price of Bitcoin would trough and we have seen some lift uh out of Bitcoin here over the past month or so. Uh so seasonality is certainly working uh in in the bull's favors there. There's also uh bullish technicals or at least technical healing and improvement that we've seen over the past six weeks. We're going to touch on technicals a little bit later. Uh and that then you have also uh working against Bitcoin on the bearish side of the equation is obviously rising interest rates. Now, Bitcoin is a store of value uh and it does not provide a yield or there is some yield that you can get out there actually of course with your staking and everything but uh within the crypto world but because interest rates moving higher like that that also draws it's not good for gold it's not good for store of value type of assets like Bitcoin and today on the 10ear we did technically hit uh a new cycle high of 5.34% %. Uh, and then the other factor working against Bitcoin on the bearish side is, you know, when you have a Fed that's basically in a rate hiking cycle. Now, cycle with parentheses around it just because, uh, we don't know how many we're going to get. We might get two or three. This is not 2002, 2003, uh, when the Fed was aggressively moving from zero up to 5% uh, to combat, you know, 9% CPIs, etc. that were coming in uh due to COVID and supply chain issues etc. However, it just generally uh Bitcoin's price tends to react more favorably uh when there is looser monetary policy easing uh Fed you know uh cut cycle. Uh so those two forces are really just uh kind of this pushpull dynamic where uh you would think that Bitcoin would be responding better in October uh as we uh you know just haven't seen. So today we're getting hit because of you know interest rates going up, oil was a little bit higher uh some volatility around tech there as well. Uh and uh if you look at Ethereum, Ethereum tends to be higher beta uh than Bitcoin. So Ethereum is almost down 5% today. And there is another story uh that uh perhaps is impacting or contributing to that outsized decline there in Ethereum. And that is Tom Lee, chairman uh Tom Lee Fund Strats. Tom Lee. I think if you're an equity trader, you probably are familiar with Tom Lee, but he is a chairman on uh BitMine Immersion, BMR. Uh it is a digital asset treasury company uh that's been accumulating uh Ethereum since, you know, basically a little over a year now. And when they announced that they were going to be accumu accumulating Ethereum last uh June 2025, they have been buying Ethereum every week. But Tom Lee last night basically said that uh they are approaching 5% of all the Ethereum in in circulation and based on you know how much that they have been buying uh they're going to stop in roughly six to seven uh weeks when they reach that 5% threshold for Ethereum. So if you look at the chart of Ethereum, you can see it's kind of taking uh you know pretty sizable hit there as is BMR. Obviously they are highly correlated uh because of uh that relationship that they have. But let's look at the technicals here on Bitcoin because I wanted to touch on one of the other you know bullish factors within the technicals. Not only is seasonality there, but if you look the the price of Bitcoin has made this push obviously above the 200 day simple moving average. It's retested uh multiple times at that 200 day simple moving average. It hasn't really breached it. We got another push higher about three weeks ago and you know we topped out around 87700ish around there. So that's your resistance. such a first kind of uh level of resistance that the bulls would want to see the price of Bitcoin overcome. Uh when you get beyond 877 roughly in 90 to 91 that's another area of resistance. So if you're bullish in the coming weeks uh you probably want to see interest rates come down or o and or oil prices come down. That tends to be more conducive uh for the price of Bitcoin. Uh but then technically you'd like to see it, you know, get up there and clear 91. Uh that would be uh basically the highest level since January and technically uh incrementally bullish. But also pay attention to the 50-day simple moving average, which has now from the underside crossed above the 200 day simple moving average. That's known as a golden cross in technical analysis land. And so that tends to be uh another bullish indicator. The death cross is the inverse of that. Uh so you can just see that there are multiple indications on the charts that the the technicals are firming up. They're improving. Uh and at the same time I I think you just have to be mindful of inflation rates and any kind of changes to how aggressive the Fed may or may not be. Uh but we'll keep an eye on that. Uh thanks so much for watching today. Uh hit the subscribe button if you'd like to receive future notifications about the episodes. Thank you.