Bitcoin ‘Grossly Undervalued’ at Current Prices, Traders Say Ahead of CPI, Trump-Harris Debate Week

Bitcoin (BTC) was little changed over the weekend ahead of a busy week that includes a much-awaited Presidential debate and the release of key U.S. economic figures that track changes in consumer prices and inflation.

BTC traded in a tight range between $54,000 and $55,000 over the weekend, marked by lower trading volumes on exchanges. On Friday, over $220 million in crypto longs, or bets on higher prices, were liquidated amid a sudden market drop after a jobs report – leading to less activity.

Major tokens were similarly little changed, with ether (ETH), Solana’s (SOL), Cardano’s ADA, Ripple’s XRP (XRP) and Tron’s (TRX) rising just 0.5% in the past 24 hours. Mid-cap tokens showed some gains as memecoin neiro on ETH (NEIRO) and the BitTorrent token (BTT) jumped 25%.

However, bitcoin appears attractive to traders at Presto Research at current prices, who said in a Monday note that they consider the asset “grossly undervalued.”

“Amid macro factors dominating BTC price talk lately, the market is overlooking one of the key fundamentals underpinning Bitcoin’s value – network security,” Presto analysts Peter Chung and Min Jung said. “The hashrate, the computational power that secures the network, has hit an all-time high of 679 EH/s, making it the most secure network by far.”

“If you believe that trend will continue (in fact, the availability of spot ETF means we are in a much better setup than ever before), BTC seems grossly undervalued at the moment,” they added.

Bitcoin (BTC) miners are expanding their capacity again since August, as previously reported, amid all-time highs in hashrate, which has typically marked price bottoms for the asset.

Elsewhere, some traders said the lower-than-expected U.S. payroll figures indicated a weaker labor market, while the lower unemployment figure has lessened the concerns of an imminent recession.

“It seems the lower-than-expected payroll data is dominating the market sentiment at the moment, as broad assets declined since Friday’s data,” Lucy Hu, senior analyst at Metalpha, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “We expect the crypto market will remain highly volatile leading to the next Fed meeting.”

However, bitcoin could see movement in the coming week as August’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures are scheduled for Wednesday, and Producer Price Index (PPI) figures on Thursday.

Also on Tuesday, crypto-friendly Republican candidate Donald Trump goes head to head with Democrat Kamala Harris, where voters are on the lookout for policy decisions. Trump has previously said he aims to make the U.S. the “crypto capital” of the world, and Harris aides are also reportedly considering policies to grow the industry.

CORRECTION (Sept. 9, 11:14 UTC): Corrects release dates for inflation data in penultimate paragraph.