• The optimism that the Fed will slow down the speed of its interest-rate hike has led to a BTC price rally ahead of the speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
• While big players like BTC miners and whales have been selling their holdings, small Bitcoin investors like Shrimps (< 1$BTC) and Crabs (up to 10 $BTC) have been accumulating heavily in the last 30 days.

After facing heavy selling pressure earlier this week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency – Bitcoin (BTC) – surged by over 3 percent today reclaiming the $17,000 level. This is for the first time in two weeks that the BTC price can be seen above these levels.

With this, Bitcoin has also recovered by nearly 10 percent from its 2022-low of $15,500. The recent Bitcoin price spike comes ahead of the speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday, November 30. Market analysts have been expecting a slower pace of interest rate hikes in the U.S. leading to the current optimism.

Later today, Jerome Powell shall be speaking at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution. After four successive rate hikes of 75 basis points earlier this year, some Fed officials also expect Powell to slow down a bid. Thus, the final rate hike by the Fed for 2022 is likely to be 50 basis points. Speaking on this development, Hayden Hughes, chief executive of social-trading platform Alpha Impact said:

Overnight, there’s been increasing commentary around the perception that the Fed will raise rates by only 50 basis points. Since crypto usually leads other asset classes, we may see equities rally” as the mid-December Fed meeting nears.

The rapidly tightening monetary policy has been one of the reasons behind the strong selling of crypto assets this year. Of course, the collapse of some key market players like Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Celsius, Networks, FTX, etc. has further exacerbated the matter.

On-chain data for Bitcoin

Today’s Bitcoin price rally comes amid greater optimism in the broader cryptocurrency market. After making a move above $17,000 earlier today, the BTC price has retraced partially to $16,888, as of press time.

However, on-chain data shows that Bitcoin miners have entered a strong capitulation phase and have been selling their BTC holdings aggressively through this month of November. In its latest report, on-chain data provider Glassnode explains:

One consistent event which motivates the transition from a bear back towards a bull market is the dramatic realization of losses, as investors give up and capitulate at scale.

November has seen the fourth largest capitulation event on record, recording a 7-day realized loss of -$10.16B. This is 4.0x larger than the peak in Dec 2018, and 2.2x larger than March 2020.

The Bitcoin price has corrected by more than 20 percent this month making it the worst November in the history of the cryptocurrency. At the same time, the Bitcoin hashrate has also started to turn over in a not-so-good sign for miners. The Bitcoin hashrate is down by 13.7 percent from its all-time high, on a seven-day average period. During the next Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment, the hashrate could drop by 9 percent.

Bitcoin shrimps and crabs Are Buying

While big players like BTC miners and whales have been selling their holdings, small Bitcoin investors like Shrimps (< 1$BTC) and Crabs (up to 10 $BTC) have been accumulating heavily in the last 30 days. Below is the data from Glassnode regarding aggressive BTC purchases by this cohort. 

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