As 2024 comes to a close, Bitcoin (BTC) has been performing poorly, which is in contrast to its historical performance in the year-end “Santa Rise.”
The largest cryptocurrency overall added about 2.8% in the 51st week, and this week it is on track to decline by 11%. Although it tends to rise by 3% in the 52nd week, the price of Bitcoin has fallen in five of the past six years. So there’s not much hope this time either.
The exact timing of what is considered Santa’s gathering varies, but is clearly closer to December than January and perhaps a few days on either side.
The trend extends to the entire quarter as well. The fourth quarter tends to be one of Bitcoin’s strongest periods, but it has underperformed this year. Since 2013, Bitcoin’s price has risen by an average of 85% in the last three months of the year, Coinglass data shows. In 2024, the percentage will be less than 50%.
This current retrograde is reminiscent of the beginning of 2021, admittedly shortly after Santa appears up the chimney.
On January 8, 2021, the price of Bitcoin was around $40,000. By January 27, the price had fallen to $30,000, a 25% drop and somewhat larger than the current 15% drop.
However, this withdrawal was in the middle of a bull run that started at around $10,000 in December 2020 and ended in November 2021 at $70,000. The similarities are that the realized price, which is the average on-chain cost of all tokens in circulation, continues to rise, meaning investors are, on average, buying coins at higher prices.
At the same time, the price remains ahead of the short-term holder’s realized price, reflecting the average on-chain holding price of coins transferred over the last 155 days.
From December 2020 to April 2021, Bitcoin remained above its short-term holder realized price (STH RP) and used this level as support; Usually, in bull markets, Bitcoin uses this price level as support. The current STH RP price is $84,000, indicating that the bull market is still intact as long as Bitcoin stays above this key level.
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