20 September 2024
In a detailed post on X, crypto analyst Jamie Coutts outlined various indicators he monitors to gauge when the market might pick up bullish momentum.
Crypto Market Might Be In The Final Stage Of The Bearish Phase
Coutts, Chief Crypto Analyst at the financial knowledge and education platform RealVision, noted that the cryptocurrency market has gradually declined. The top 200 equal-weight index (EWI) shows that the leading 200 cryptocurrencies by market cap have experienced a 55% pullback over the past six months.
Despite this downward trajectory, Coutts believes the risk/reward ratio is favorable for adding select digital assets at current levels.
Coutts highlighted the steep surge in the alt season indicator, a data point that measures the degree by which altcoins outperform Bitcoin (BTC). However, this rise is not accompanied by a sustained Bitcoin rally, which requires its price to be above its all-time-high (ATH) value.
As a result, the upward-moving altseason indicator may be short-lived. Still, Coutts suspects the market is “in the final throes of the bearish thrust.”
The analyst emphasized that even when altcoins outperform BTC in terms of price, investing in them may not always be wise if they are still in a downward trend. Coutts recalled a similar situation in 2022, during the collapse of the FTX exchange. He suggests that the ideal time to invest in altcoins is when they are trending upward not only on the absolute price chart but also on the relative price chart.
This Indicator Must Hit 45% For Bull Market To Resume
According to Coutts, one key metric to determine whether the market has entered bullish territory is the percentage of digital assets above their 200-day moving average (MA). Currently, only 11% of digital assets are above the 200-day MA. For a bull market to resume, at least 45% of digital assets must be above this level.
For the uninitiated, the 200-day MA is a technical analysis indicator that represents the average price of an asset over the past 200 trading days. Traders and analysts use it to identify the long-term trend of an asset, including digital assets like BTC.
Despite the recent market downturn, certain fundamental metrics within the crypto ecosystem, such as daily active users (DAU), daily transactions, and network value-to-fee ratio, have increased in the past six months. Further, daily fees are down 84%, a decrease that can be attributed to the implementation of EIP-4844, which slashed transaction fees for Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem users.
Coutts added that a bull market could be on the horizon when prices and fees begin to trend upward together. “We’re not there yet, but prices will lead, and fees will naturally follow,” he noted. As of press time, the total crypto market cap, excluding BTC, is $879.676 billion.