How are you feeling? Are you worried? Excited?

I sense a lot of concern. If I had to guess at the cause, I suspect there’s a gap between expectations and reality.

On the one hand, on-chain and technical data created the impression that we should’ve had a bigger drop-off than we've gotten. That's how extreme we got earlier this year, before the halving.

On the other hand, the January-March mania created the impression that this market would go much higher, much more quickly than it has. That seemed like the consensus just a few months ago, now shattered.

Because nobody's getting what they expected, everybody's on edge.

I offered my own theory, dug into some metrics, addressed your questions about the “bull market support band,” and looked at what miners are doing in my update from June 26, 2024.

I’ll have a new altcoin report or two later this summer and more goodies in the coming months.

Scroll down for some content you may enjoy.

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Crypto crashes Capitol Hill’s stock ban talks

Bottom line: As part of negotiations on a bill to prevent insider trading by forcing Congressmembers to put their individual stock holdings in blind trusts, one of the lead lawmakers wants to exclude crypto from the bill and another wants to include it.

My take: I personally don't see why you would prohibit insider trading of stocks without prohibiting insider trading of crypto. They’re two sides of the same coin and members can do the same things with both.

At the same time, members shouldn’t have to give up custody of their crypto to serve in Congress.

I can think of a few compromises, but this is one of many examples of how seemly straightforward ideas run into practical problems that don't necessarily have good solutions. Multiply the ideas by 535 and the problems by 1,000, and you can understand why lawmaking is hard (and will get worse if crypto gets too partisan).

Why you should care: You don't want to build your investment thesis on new laws from the US or any change in policy or regulation. Too much can change along the way.

About those miners . . .

Is it just me, or do I see almost nobody talking about Bitcoin miners anymore? Maybe the Internet algorithms deliver it to you but not me?

Until engagement and inflows pick up, you need to pay attention to miners.

While their impact drops with each halving, they still matter a lot. They’re the first to get new Bitcoins and the only forced seller. Relative to their size, they have an outsized influence on the market. 

They’re clearly under stress, but it’s hard to quantify the extent to which this stress affects the crypto market and miners themselves.

Miners have more financing options now than ever before. Traditional loans, loans against their BTC inventory, selling computing power, hosting storage and processing operations within their facilities, selling equity, etc. The range of ways minors can make money has grown substantially over the past few years.

While this helps miners weather the fluctuations in Bitcoin’s price, difficulty, and mining costs, it creates a new risk: those financing models fall apart or force miners into further distress.

It's impossible to quantify that risk.

Let's hope we never have to worry about it. Let's also not get too complacent.

I’ll continue to cover miner behaviors in my updates.

Relax and enjoy the ride!

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