3 Reasons BTC Could Face More Pressure
CryptoQuant warned that a sustainable rebound would require something the market currently lacks: fresh buyers.
Bitcoin’s latest rebound attempt has failed miserably, with the asset falling from $81,000 last Wednesday to $62,000 on Saturday, a 23% drop in mere days.
New CryptoQuant data suggests this weakness is not simply the result of leverage being flushed out, as underlying spot demand remains poor and several other sources of selling pressure are simultaneously intensifying.
Buyers Are Nowhere to Be Found
Perhaps the most worrying signal came from CQ’s Spot and Perpetual Futures Demand Growth indicator, which, according to analyst XWIN, estimated that 30-day BTC spot demand has fallen to approximately -280,000 units, while perpetual futures demand sits at around -82,000 BTC. Combined, these figures represent over 360,000 BTC in negative demand, reversing an earlier improvement in spot activity that ultimately proved short-lived.
Futures taker CVD remains dominated by sellers as well, while spot taker activity is merely around neutral rather than showing the aggressive buying necessary to stage a more profound rebound. This is not something new for the market. CryptoQuant’s report argued that this weakness has developed for weeks.
As we reported in late October, CQ’s 30-day apparent demand had remained negative since October 14, reaching -76,000 BTC by October 25. Institutional demand has also deteriorated, as seen in the ETF sector. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw almost $1.3 billion in net withdrawals during the first full week of November, a four-month high. The ETFs remained in the red in the past week as well, with $1.07 billion leaving the funds.
Liquidity elsewhere is shrinking as well. Citing data from Glassnode, CQ noted that stablecoin supply has dropped by approximately $14.2 billion over the past month, removing another potential source of deployable crypto-market capital.
BTC Miners Adding Fuel to the Fire?
Bitcoin miner transfers to exchanges surged to over 2,000 BTC, over 16 times the 30-day daily average of 127 BTC, according to CQ. Almost the entire batch came from Antpool. This doesn’t necessarily mean that miners sold those units, as the report explicitly cautioned that exchange deposits can represent treasury movements rather than immediate liquidations.
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However, the timing is what makes the entire narrative questionable. BTC’s price has fallen sharply while mining difficulty remains elevated, potentially squeezing miner profitability and increasing the incentive for less efficient operators to monetize part of their holdings.
There’s also a major reversal from conditions seen just a month ago. We reported in October that aggressive miner selling had largely disappeared, with no extreme miner-outflow events since late August.