JPMorgan, one of Wall Street’s major banks, reportedly signaled a possible decline in Bitcoin (BTC) price following the highly anticipated reward halving event. The software upgrade is slated to happen around April 19-20. However, BTC is already dealing with high volatility in the market, recording a slump of around 14% in the last 7 days.
JPMorgan goes short on Bitcoin
According to a report, JPMorgan’s analysis of open interest in Bitcoin futures suggests that the crypto market is still in an overbought state. It added that Bitcoin might struggle to keep up after halving. Data provided by Coinglass shows that the open interest for Bitcoin on Thursday reached to $30.81 billion. However, it is a drop of around 2.35% in the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin is trading at an average price of $61,538, at the press time. This price range is still above JPMorgan’s volatility adjusted comparison with gold. This amount stands at $45,000 and its projected post-halving production cost is speculated to be around $42,000. It added that the production cost has acted as a lower boundary for Bitcoin prices earlier.
The world’s biggest crypto recorded a new all time high (ATH) of $73,750 on March 14, 2024, running high on the bullish sentiments. This surge came after gaining regulatory approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to link crypto with ETFs. BTC price is already up by 106% in the last one year. It is holding a market cap of $1.21 trillion.
BTC to face selling pressure
It is important to note that the much hyped halving event will surely have an impact on Bitcoin mining companies. JPMorgan expects a vast drop in hashrate as the reward for mining decreases. It also predicts a consolidation among Bitcoin miners. This can lead the publicly-listed miners to gain a larger share.
The report further highlighted that some mining firms may explore opportunities in regions with low energy costs after halving. The miners might look at Latin America or Africa as an option to deploy their less efficient mining rigs.
An another report revealed that Marathon Digital, CleanSpark, and Bitfarms have cumulatively Bitcoin reserves worth about $2.8 billion. This will be a crucial move as it happened just days before the mining reward is halved. It mentioned that the miners will collectively receive 450 new Bitcoins daily. However, this will be a huge drop from the current 900 for verifying transactions.
