Bitcoin's Tepid Price Action in September Is Historically Normal
Following a period of two months of consolidation, Bitcoin underwent a strong breakout at the end of July that took it from the $9,000s to a high at $12,500. But since those highs in late August, Bitcoin has undergone a correction that brought it as low as $9,800 at the start of September, although the price has since found support around $10,400.
This drop was not entirely unexpected, though: analyses of historical prices show that the ongoing correction is par for the course when it comes to Bitcoin's short-term trading patterns.
Bitcoin analyst Zack Voell recently noted that September has historically been a "rough month for bitcoin." His analysis shows that the seven out of eleven Septembers that Bitcoin has traded on a public market, price action has been red.
This is in line with the so-called "September Effect" in legacy markets such as the stock market. According to Investopedia, looking at historical Dow Jones Industrial Average data, "September is the only calendar month with a negative return over the last 100 years."
It may be that Bitcoin's oft-touted correlation with the S&P 500 is playing out as both Bitcoin and the leading stock index peaked earlier this month, then corrected in tandem. As on-chain analyst Willy Woo commented:
This pullback from what I gather looking on-chain took most spot investors off guard, there wasn’t the usual on-chain activity preceding it. Sell off happened at exchanges only. Stocks correlation pulled BTC down its bullish week of breaking free from Stocks.
Miners Optimistic About Bitcoin's Prospects
Miners are shaking off Bitcoin's seasonal weakness.
Rafael Schultze-Kraft, CTO of cryptocurrency analytics firm Glassnode, reported on September 21st that the mining difficulty of Bitcoin blocks increased by 11.3% over the recent epoch. Since the halving in May this year, Bitcoin's mining difficulty has climbed around 20%.
Ethan Vera, co-founder of Hashrateindex, told the BTC Times that miners remain profitable and continue to add new machines to their farms, thus increasing the hash rate and mining difficulty.