jakiro
Bitcoin is showing a form of weakness that often precedes large directional moves.
October 15,Traders cashed in $1.8 billion in profits, one of the biggest days since early this summer.
On the same day, the market also posted a $430 million realized loss.
This data confirms the general feeling in the market since the weekend’s plunge: momentum is gradually fading, and a large amount of money is flowing into the exit channel.
At press time, the price of Bitcoin was below $110,000, down more than 10% since the beginning of October.
This part of the decline is not a slow decline, but is caused by the rapid liquidation of positions by investors who entered the market in early 2025 and have held it to this day.
Long-term holders (i.e. investors who have held positions for more than 3 months) were the main force in this sell-off, and the size of their realized profits was more than 6 times that of short-term holders..
Even during last week’s plunge, long-term holders were still deeply profitable, so we can tell they weren’t panic selling.
They are conducting de-risking operations:Choose to take profits when the market weakens rather than wait for a rebound.
After market consolidation, a certain degree of profit-taking is a routine operation, and profit-taking of hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day can be interpreted as healthy capital rotation.
But as has been observed since early October, when this kind of capital outflow forms a sustained trend, its nature is no longer “dispersed shipments”, but begins to show the characteristics of “market exhaustion”.
The scale of realized losses is also rising.Although the current losses are still within a “controllable” range, they have increased in step with the scale of profit realization.
If realized losses continue to grow in tandem with profit realizations, it may mean that de-risking operations are spreading from short-term holders to the entire market.
This spread may be highly contagious, as half of short-term Bitcoin holders are currently experiencing floating losses.
Data from the on-chain data analysis platform Checkonchain shows thatUnrealized losses currently account for about 2% of market capitalization. Although small, they are rising rapidly..
If the price of Bitcoin falls below $100,000, this ratio is likely to rise to 5%, a level that is enough to turn the current market “unease” into full-blown panic.
Judging from historical data,Only in a complete bear market stage will more than 30% of the circulating supply be at a loss.,The market is now dangerously close to this threshold.
If buyers can successfully hold the $100,000 mark, Bitcoin could reset its short-term cost base and resume bullish momentum.
If it falls below $100,000, the cost basis for a new round of buyers will collapse and all short-term liquidity will turn into a loss.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the cycle, but it could extend the correction further to $80,000, which is about a 35% retracement from the all-time high (ATH).
Bitcoin’s current stability remains impressive given the scale of the current selling pressure, but the signals being sent on-chain are unmistakable:Market confidence is declining.
The bulls are still holding on to the defensive line, but every falling K-line makes it more difficult for the outside world to judge whether they are “buying on the dip” or “catching the falling knife.”
