Fund management firm VanEck identified two strong bullish indicators for Bitcoin on April 24, according to analysis from the firm’s digital assets analysts Patrick Bush and Matthew Sigel. The analysts highlighted Bitcoin’s funding rate and declining hash rate as historically reliable signals preceding substantial price gains over 30-day to 180-day time horizons.
Negative Funding Rate as Bullish Signal
VanEck’s analysts noted that Bitcoin’s 7-day moving average funding rate had turned negative over the past week, hitting its lowest levels since 2023 at -1.8%. According to their analysis, examining instances since 2020 where 7-day Bitcoin funding rates turned negative revealed substantial uplift in average returns across multiple timeframes.
Bush and Sigel stated that since 2020, the average 30-day return on Bitcoin has been 4.5%, whereas the average 30-day return following negative funding rate periods has been 11.5%, with a “hit rate” of 77%. The analysts further noted that a disproportionately large percentage of Bitcoin’s best days since 2020 followed periods of negative funding rates. “Negative FR days produced 19 of the top 50 180-day return periods since 2020, despite occurring only 13.6% of the time. Five of the top 10 single-day BTC returns occurred after purchasing during negative funding periods, as did 10 of the top 20,” they wrote.
Hash Rate Decline Supports Bullish Setup
The second key indicator highlighted was Bitcoin’s falling hash rate, indicating less network mining activity. According to Bush and Sigel, Bitcoin’s hash rate now sits at 985.5 EH/s, down -7.5% from its all-time high of 1,065.7 EH/s set in late November 2025.
VanEck’s analysts argued that a decline in hash rate has historically been a strong indicator of positive price action. Six of the past seven hash rate drawdowns (excluding the most recent drawdowns for which there is insufficient forward data to make conclusions) preceded substantial price growth. Excluding the one drawdown that did not lead to a price increase, VanEck found that the median price gain after hash rate declines examined was 37.7% over 90 days and 631% over 180 days.
The current hash rate’s moving average is in the 16th percentile over a 30-day timeline and the 9th percentile over a 90-day timeline, according to the analysis.
Recent Price Context
Last week, Bitcoin surged to its highest price since January, hitting US$78,962 according to CoinGecko.
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