Bitcoin market sentiment and fundamentals still favor BTC price bulls

Bitcoin price has seen a healthy upward tick toward the $13,000 mark in the fourth quarter.

"It shows that miners are confident about the future price direction of Bitcoin and are scaling up resources. They are often good at predicting BTC price, although price increases don't always follow the hash rate increases. There is no established link between the two. It's possible we see the price rise especially if more miners hold rather than sell their new coins, but it's not a certainty."

"The rise in hashrate during consolidation or a slow uptrend in price is always a positive for more price upside. As price rises, miners that invested in well managed farms will profit nicely. Bitcoin mining will always be more profitable than Ethereum mining long term for the obvious reason that Ethereum's C-Level management is on a mission to eliminate mining in favor of proof of stake."Bitcoin distribution analysis reveals patterns.

Because Bitcoin becomes rarer by the day, as there is only a limited amount of coins that can be mined, it's important to also consider the role that distribution trends among BTC holders play in the sentiment of the market.

The two main reasons for this may be that new holders are purchasing Bitcoin from the secondary market and saving it in cold wallets as a store of value, similar to what traditional investors would do with gold, and the DeFi boom, which may lead some investors to tokenize Bitcoin for quick profits in DeFi markets rather than hold it.

Hao further stated that "With fewer Bitcoin left and more usage emerging, the Bitcoin price trend would certainly seem to be bullish."

According to market sentiment data tracked by IntoTheBlock - which analyzes on-chain data, exchange signals and derivatives information - the market is currently "Mostly bearish," even as Bitcoin touched $12,900.

Simultaneously, this has led to the correlation between BTC price and the U.S. equities markets to be higher, along with positive funding rates in the Bitcoin futures market.

These are highly encouraging signs for Bitcoin, and the recent BTC purchases by large institutional investors such as Square and MicroStrategy are pushing the short-term bullish sentiment in line with traditional markets through the end of the year.

The excessive quantitative easing done by governments all over the world to temporarily solve their nations' economic woes will also have a positive impact on the price of Bitcoin, according to Vays:."Unreasonable money printing by every government in the world, corporations investing in Bitcoin as a strategic reserve and the continued war by the US against non-KYC/AML businesses is more than enough fundamental in favor of a Bitcoin price breakout."