As the Bitcoin price soars past $47,000 for the first time since last month, analysts say there are fundamental metrics showing strength across the board right now—and it goes well beyond short-term price action.
BTC, the leading digital currency, surged late this week, reaching $47,146.61 at the time of writing. It has now nearly reclaimed its short-lived $49,000 high right after the launch of several Bitcoin spot ETFs last month.
Blockchain analysts are saying it's not a fluke—there's lots of data to back up the gains. According to lead Glassnode analyst James Check, Bitcoin's “Realized Cap,” a measure of Bitcoin's market cap based on the price that all coins last moved, is up $50 billion since October.
This reflects “true on-chain capital inflows into the orange coin,” according to an X post from Check on Thursday.
A #Bitcoin 🧵 of numbers going up.
The most important one – The Realized Cap.
It has increased by $50B since October last year, reflecting true on-chain capital inflows into the orange coin. pic.twitter.com/7FxAw8mUrH
— _Checkɱate 🟠🔑⚡☢️🛢️ (@_Checkmatey_) February 9, 2024
As usual, the network's hash rate also continues its endless upward climb, now protecting the network with 572 Exahash per second. That's the equivalent of every human on Earth computing 71.5 billion guesses to mine a Bitcoin block, every single second.
Bitcoin's economic throughput is up as well, settling $7.1 billion per day in purely economical transactions. The figure is close to BTC's all-time highs which occurred closer to price peaks in April and November of 2021.
“Over 90% of all BTC units are now held by investors with a cost basis below the current spot price,” wrote Check. “The brutal hard work of buying and holding Bitcoin through a bear is paying off.”
Based on Bitcoin's market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) ratio, the average unit of BTC is currently 100% in profit. In USD terms, Check said that the entire network sits on a profit of $448 billion—though that also includes many ancient coins that have likely been lost forever.
Not all those profits are going to whales, either: There's now more than 1.37 million BTC held by “Shrimp,” or entities that own less than 1 BTC.
Meanwhile, over 2.8 million Bitcoin addresses now own more than $10,000 USD worth of BTC. That's just 68,000 addresses from a new all-time high, according to Glassnode.
Lastly, Bitcoin's inflows and outflows from exchanges have surged to $3 billion per day, showing increased short-term interest in the asset. Since U.S. Bitcoin ETFs went live, they've already absorbed more than $2.2 billion of net inflows, including $400 million on Thursday alone.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.