Mining BTC is harder than ever 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week

Bitcoin starts the day at close to $28,000 before rising to a new high for BTC mining difficulty as billionaire investor Ray Dalio imagines a terrifying "World War III."Bitcoin counts down.

As the weekly closure gives way to a traditional short squeeze, the new week gets underway strongly in the "Uptober" spirit.

In a return to earlier in the month's typical BTC price volatility, the biggest cryptocurrency is approaching $28,000 just before the first Wall Street open.

Although it is still trading inside a well-established trading range, Bitcoin is keeping investors on their toes since both longs and shorts are falling victim to sudden changes in spot price, and liquidations are increasing.

Sentiment is fluctuating in step with these moves.

 Heading toward the top of the range, Bitcoin sees a flurry of bullish projections, with these replaced by fear and foreboding when the downside reenters.

 Well-known market commentators thus remain cautious, even as October — traditionally Bitcoin’s best-performing month — plays out.

Behind the scenes, the signs are solid — network fundamentals are headed to new all-time highs, and difficulty is due what could be its third-largest hike of 2023.This week, the attention has shifted from macroeconomic data to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, so there is a lot for Bitcoin investors to watch out for in terms of outside factors that could affect the volatility of the BTC price.

In its weekly list of potential BTC price triggers, Cointelegraph Markets delves further into these market phenomena and others.

Short squeezes and "old" coins in the BTC price.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView verified that the weekly close volatility on Bitcoin did not let off this week, with one short squeeze after another to see BTC/USD add $1,000.

In contrast to the previous weekend and the day before, when the downside dominated the scene after troubling macroeconomic reports from the United States, the atmosphere as of the first Wall Street open is noticeably different.

The excursion to multiday highs of $27,975 has now rekindled excitement, according to Michal van de Poppe, founder and CEO of MN Trading, who called it a "great move."

He stated in the day's discussion to X (previously Twitter) users that "Dips are for buying, the most optimal entry would be $27,300."

Van de Poppe added that the upward tendency would continue.

Monitoring tool CoinGlass detected liquidations among short BTC positions when covering the cause of the most recent action.

Along with a liquidation heatmap for BTC/USDT perpetual swaps on Binance, the biggest global exchange, it concluded, "At 27450, a significant number of shorts have been liquidated."

After that, pay attention to liquidation levels 26500 and 27660.

Forex trader well-known Having previously forewarned of the possibility of strong negative pressure bringing Bitcoin all the way back to $20,000 in the coming months, Tony was more circumspect.

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For research company Santiment, though, the change in tone involved more than just brief squeezes.

It demonstrated that "older" BTC was in motion because it had left wallets just before the price returned to $27,000 after a protracted period of hibernation.

The largest amount of dormant $BTC changing wallets since July, these spikes in our Age Consumed metric indicate price direction reversals," one of the accompanying comments on an example chart said.

Dalio foresees a "World War III" outcome that is 50/50.

The macro environment will have fewer noteworthy data prints from the United States in the coming days than it did last week.

Instead, anxiety over the possible market repercussions of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war is dominating, with the threat of inflation looming in the distance.

The latter was previously all too obvious, as further data releases from last week and earlier demonstrated that U.S. inflation was continuing above what the market had anticipated.

With only two weeks until the Federal Reserve's next rate-setting meeting on November 1, inflation clues will be crucial for the outlook on risky assets.

weeks until the November Fed meeting," a financial analysis source The key US financial happenings of the week were listed in The Kobeissi Letter's summary on X.

One of the 17 Fed speakers scheduled to talk this week is Chair of the Fed Jerome Powell.

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Kobeissi was one of many who cited a dire prognosis from billionaire financier Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, demonstrating the extent to which politics may shape mood.

 On October 12, Dalio sent a message on LinkedIn stating that there was a 50% chance that "World War III" will break out in the next two years. 

Thankfully, he added, "the trend towards a world war between the biggest powers (the US and China) has not yet irrevocably crossed the line from being containable (which it is right now) to becoming a brutal war between the biggest powers and their allies."

"We will witness the transition from contained pre-hot war conflicts to a brutal World War III if these major powers do engage in direct combat, in which one side kills a significant number on the other side."

GBTC "discount" is getting near to the two-year minimum.

Beyond BTC price movement, the largest Bitcoin institutional investment vehicle is currently experiencing a robust rebound.

Since December 2021, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has been trading at a smaller discount to net asset value (NAV), or the price at which Bitcoin is currently trading.

GBTC's turnaround coincided with legal victory for operator Grayscale against U.S. regulators, as Cointelegraph noted, and the discount, which was once a premium, was about 50% earlier in the year.

Markets now seem to be more certain than ever that a spot price exchange-traded fund (ETF), which Grayscale hopes to develop and launch out of GBTC, will be approved, resulting in a surge of institutional interest in Bitcoin.

One noteworthy aspect of GBTC is that it doesn't provide a simple method for exchanging shares for actual Bitcoin and trades over-

the-counter (OTC), according to a well-known dealer. 

Melker continued that the door opening to GBTC becoming an ETF was “still far from a sure thing.”

Concurrently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also scrutinizing several other spot Bitcoin ETF proposals, including those from financial giants like Fidelity, Blackrock, and Franklin Templeton, which adds another layer of complexity and uncertainty to the landscape,” he noted.

A new record for mining difficulty is soon to be set.

The most recent BTC price gain has improved predictions for the foundations of the Bitcoin network.

According to data from monitoring tool BTC.com, Bitcoin difficulty is now expected to increase to new all-time highs before its next automated readjustment on October 16.

In 2023, when both difficulty and mining hash rate constantly set new records, this is nothing new. But with a nearly 7% increase, the impending difficulty hike would rank among the top three so far this year.

Should it lock in, difficulty would surpass 60 trillion for the first time, indicating the fiercer mining competition and unmatched network security of the Bitcoin currency.

Meanwhile, predictions for hash rates differ greatly depending on the resource. The most recent record-breaking hash rate, 497.66 exahashes per second (EH/s), was recorded on October 9.

The relative low BTC price levels coupled with the high difficulty unavoidably raises concerns about miner profitability. There are occasionally questions about how miners are motivated to continue when costs per Bitcoin rise.

Similar to hash rate, estimates of the true cost of the per-bitcoin aggregate production cost vary depending on a number of variables, including physical location.

The amount of BTC received every mined block will also be reduced by 50% as a result of next year's block subsidy halving.

According to James Straten, research and analytics analyst at cryptocurrency insights company CryptoSlate, "price is okay for miners at the moment, but come halving and increasing difficulty needs to increase rapidly," he said in part of X analysis last week.

Does "Uptober" 2023's future still remain in doubt?

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Due to the robustness of the current trading range, which has been in place since March, even little movements in the spot price of BTC can have an impact on the month-to-date gains for October.

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While negative just last week, the push to $28,000 now means that BTC/USD is up 3.5% since the beginning of the month. 

With two weeks until the monthly close, Bitcoin’s ultimate performance remains anyone’s guess. 3.5%, while far from poor, would still constitute Bitcoin’s weakest October month since 2018. 

Data from CoinGlass further shows the worst October on record in 2014 produced “only” 12% losses for Bitcoin, leaving the door open for a new red record should conditions deteriorate.

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