Bitcoin (Bitcoin) In the midst of a fierce battle between bulls and bears, the network is now responding, the data shows.

tracking device reveal This week, the difficulty of Bitcoin broke the 18-week continuous green record and dropped for the first time since July.

Difficulty adjusted to 20% BTC price drop

In the cyclical short-term price movements, people still worry that Bitcoin has not yet recovered from its latest all-time high of $69,000.

Surprised the analyst, even Refused As a lifetime price model, BTC/USD in the past month feels like uncharted territory-although it has roughly doubled so far this year.

“Because Bitcoin is now more than 20% below its all-time high, the headlines of traditional media have announced that Bitcoin has entered a bear market,” the on-chain analytics company Glassnode concluded in its latest weekly newsletter.Chain last week.”

“However, to the surprise of some readers, the current market adjustment is actually the least severe in 2021. Some people might even say that Bitcoin holders are doing business as usual.”

Nevertheless, network fundamentals are now considering the latest drop. On Sunday, the difficulty dropped by 1.5%-after nine consecutive cycles of continuous rise. The next adjustment is currently expected to further drop by nearly 2%.

Spending by long-term holders triggers “uncertainty”

Looking at the overall situation, Glassnode does not rule out the possibility of further price declines.

related: Analysts re-released the $400,000 BTC price forecast, Bitcoin tests the nerves of traders

The combination of long-term holders’ selling, high open interest in the derivatives market, and other phenomena may trigger the downtrend to continue to new local lows.

“The leverage of open positions in options and futures at or close to ATH raises some concerns about the increased potential for “strike-out”. The funding rate shows only a slight positive deviation, which makes both long and short squeeze reasonable Scenario,” it concluded.

Regarding LTH behavior, it added:

“Long-term holders have allocated 5.8% of the cumulative supply since March, and there is some uncertainty based on their spending patterns.”

At the same time, when discussing open positions, analyst Willy Woo pointed out that in the post-ETF environment, activity may only remain at a high level, and it does not necessarily indicate impending turbulence.

“IMO does not necessarily need to be flushed,” he Tweet.

“This may be a sign of the era of futures ETFs after cash and arbitrage trading.”

After repeatedly running to $59,000 in the past 24 hours and then being rejected, BTC/USD hovered at $56,000 at the time of writing on Thursday.