Bitcoin is making yet another breakout attempt today, going as far as $61,300 only to fall back under $60k.

As BTC continues to range, volatility has dropped remarkably low to a level we hadn't seen since December last year. Bitcoin Historical Volatility Index is at 2.57, down from 16.30 in early Jan. and Bitcoin 60-day Volatility is at 7.58%, last seen in October.

So, does this mean a top is near? Unlikely, as trader Byzantine General noted, “BTC has literally never printed a cycle top on low volatility. So if the top is in, it would be a first.”

In line with the rising prices, the funding rate on Bitcoin perpetual contracts today ground upwards, with the highest on Binance at 0.1526%.

As of writing, compared to the spot price on Coinbase at $60,075, on CME BTC is trading at $61,440.

Offshore #bitcoin futures basis = 40%+ annualized pic.twitter.com/YaV3azGyNs

— skew (@skewdotcom) April 12, 2021

High funding isn’t really good for the prices as this means it’s expensive to be long, and it shows that being long is the overcrowded trade.

However, the saving grace is that throughout Q1, the funding has been high, yet BTC price rallied over 100%.

Furthermore, the market isn’t purely driven by derivatives as there is a strong spot bid going on. As we reported, insurance companies, which have big bags and are long-term holders, are also set to come in.

Buy Bitcoin and forget.

— Norgard (@BrianNorgard) April 10, 2021

Besides funding, there are several bearish arguments for BTC right now, as noted by Byzantine General. One of them is the ongoing shift to the majority of market cap held by short-term holders instead of long-term holders, which is still not at the 2018-top level of extremity.

His bearish arguments involve Kimchi Premium, which we again saw during the 2017 cycle top, but tighter regulations have made arbitrage even more difficult this time, mempool getting crammed resulting in average fees rising to levels last seen in Jan. 2018 isn’t good either.

Not to mention, Grayscale hasn’t added any BTC since late Feb, as it is currently closed and a sizable one since mid-Jan. GBTC continues to trade heavily in discount as well.

One of the main drivers of demand in the space really affects the price growth; however, on the other hand, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF is holding 17,013 BTC, which is not growing at Grayscale’s pace but is still speeding up. Also, this raises the chances of a Bitcoin ETF in the US.

Bearish signs, however, have no match with bullish momentum with spot volume exploding and USDT and USDC continuing to grow to add 23.6 billion and 7.4 billion respectively to their supply this year, so far, as per CoinGecko.

When it comes to network fundamentals, hashrate and difficulty continue to hit new highs, and miner revenue is up 300% this year. Transaction value in USD is also at ATH, with Lightning Network seeing steady growth.

Miners, as we reported, have started accumulating with spot exchanges' reserve continuing to go down, indicating HODLing behavior.

Not only SOPR ratio had a near re-set, Google search volume suggests retail mania hasn’t reached the top either, the same as web traffic to exchanges, growing but not yet at ATH.

Byzantine General notes that the entire crypto space is growing, from Ether, DeFi, to NFTs. And this week, we see a big event in the form of Coinbase (COIN) direct listing, which amidst the ongoing mainstream adoption “could be volatility catalyst.”

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