Open interest in Bitcoin futures remains subdued and options traders have placed bearish bets via put contracts targeting the $80,000 level. | Photo credit: Dado Ruvic
Bitcoin is down again – but this time it’s not leverage to break the market.
The original cryptocurrency fell 7.4% to fall below $100,000 for the first time since June. This represents a drop of more than 20 percent from the record set a month ago. Bitcoin pared its losses on Wednesday morning in Asia, but still struggles to find a secure footing.
Unlike the cascading wipeouts that triggered the October crash, the current decline has been driven by a steady pace of selling in the spot market. This marks a change from the pattern crypto traders have come to expect of late, where sudden bursts of volatility are typically driven by selloffs in futures markets.
Longtime Bitcoin holders have sold about 400,000 Bitcoins over the past month, an exodus of about $45 billion that has unbalanced the market, according to Markus Thielen, head of 10x Research.
At the same time, around $2 billion in crypto positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass, which is modest compared to the $19 billion in forced unwinds that punctuated last month’s crash. Open interest in Bitcoin futures remains subdued and options traders have placed bearish bets via put contracts targeting the $80,000 level.
With leverage relatively moderate, attention has turned to long-term holders choosing to sell.
“More than 319,000 Bitcoins have been reactivated in the past month, mostly from coins held for six to 12 months, suggesting significant profit-taking since mid-July,” said Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33. “While some reactivation results from internal transfers, much of it reflects actual sales. »
If the October crash was due to forced selling, the current pullback could reflect something more sobering: the erosion of conviction. According to Thielen, a growing imbalance between long-time holders unloading Bitcoin and new buyers arriving is starting to shape the direction of the market – not just sentiment.
Earlier this year, Thielen observed that “mega-whales” – entities holding between 1,000 and 10,000 Bitcoins – had begun unloading large volumes, even as institutional players attempted to absorb the supply. This helped explain Bitcoin’s choppy sideways movement over the summer. But since the Oct. 10 crash, Thielen says, broader demand has faded. “We have passed some on-chain indicators: people are underwater, they need to close their positions,” he said.
In total, accumulation by parties holding between 100 Bitcoin and 1,000 Bitcoin fell sharply. “The whales just don’t buy,” he said.
Looking ahead, Thielen warns that the détente could last until next spring. During the 2021-2022 bear market, more than a million Bitcoins were sold by large holders over nearly a year – a scale that Thielen said could be repeated. “If the pace is similar,” he said, “we could see this situation last another six months.”
He is not advocating a catastrophic fall, but believes further declines could occur. “I don’t believe in the cycle,” Thielen said, “but I guess we kind of consolidate and potentially drift a little bit lower from here. $85,000 is my maximum downside target.”
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Published on November 5, 2025
