Who is buying crypto? — Regional Market Overview: Asia vs Europe and the U.S.

Understanding the global market demands seeing beyond daily and weekly closes. The Month-over-Month (MoM) price change is one statistic that provides a solid picture of the market's overall health. This measure displays the 30-day change in regional pricing set during US, European, and Asian business hours. These regional prices are typically calculated by adding the cumulative sum of each region's price changes over a 30-day period.

When the MoM price change for Bitcoin is examined from October 2021 to July 2022, some interesting trends emerge.

A trend began in Asia around the beginning of May 2022, indicating the region's increasingly favorable sentiment about Bitcoin. The pattern in the graph above, shown in the black square, reveals that Asian investors have made the most money in the cryptocurrency business.

The figure above plainly illustrates that Asian investors have dominated the crypto market over the last two years, and that the majority of the sector's smart money appears to be coming from Asia. Asian investors have been able to sell the early 2021 high and then buy the summer bottom of 2021, as well as sell the initial pump of the summer lows.

When Bitcoin fell near $40,000 in late summer last year, Asian investors were the first to buy the dip and the first to sell when Bitcoin recaptured its all-time high in November 2021.

Trading volumes in Asia were the greatest in May 2022 since last summer, when the region took advantage of reduced prices at the expense of major sell-offs in the United States and the European Union. The fall of Luna and the following insolvency of some of the industry's top players, such as Three Arrows Capital and Voyager, have made Europeans and Americans more scared of the crypto market than ever before. Capitulation by miners and the larger macroeconomic outlook did not improve the situation.

However, the Asian-led narrative appears to be shifting quickly.

Data for July 2022 reveal that accumulation is taking place outside of Asia as well, with the US and EU markets beginning to accumulate collectively for the first time since early April. This could imply that the West is starting to recognize Bitcoin as a valuable asset in times of macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil.

US Month-over-Month Price Change by Glassnode Annotated

EU Month-over-Month Price Change by Glassnode Annotated

Asia Month-over-Month Price Change by Glassnode Annotated