The world’s most visible bitcoin buyers are buying at a near-record pace. It is not enough.
CryptoQuant’s weekly report showed 30-day clear demand at a negative 63,000 BTC since the end of March, meaning the broader market is selling off faster than institutions can absorb. The price of the ETF reached about 50,000 BTC in the 30-day window, the highest since October 2025. The Strategy’s collection was stable at about 44,000 BTC. Together, the two largest institutional channels received approximately 94,000 BTC in March.
If the institutions bought 94,000 BTC and the net demand is still negative 63,000, the rest of the market – such as shops, old whales, miners, funds – sold about 157,000 BTC in the same period.
At least four other independent signs point in the same direction.
The evolution of the whale
Large wallets, wallets with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC, have changed from being the biggest buyers in the market to being its biggest sellers on the scale of CryptoQuant describing it as one of the most aggressive cycles recorded.
Last year, these wallets added a total of 200,000 bitcoin to their holdings. Today they remove 188,000 in total. That’s about a 400,000 BTC swing from accumulation to distribution in about 18 months.
In the middle of the tier holders, wallets with 100 to 1,000 BTC, are accumulating technologically but the speed has decreased by more than 60% since October 2025, from about 1 million BTC in annual additions to 429,000. They haven’t stopped buying. They have gone down amazingly.
Perceived price pressure
Bitcoin spot price in the range of $67,000-$68,000 is 21% above the price of $54,286, the average cost of each coin in the network weighted by the last transaction. That means that the average person is still profitable, which means that history hasn’t gone down, as CoinDesk said earlier in the week.
By 2022, the signal that marked the real cycle low was falling below the target price. Bitcoin is sold under its general cost from June to October of that year, and the deepest point, about 15% lower was realized, which corresponds well with the low near $15,500.
The current setup is not. But the gap is closing fast. By the end of 2024, when bitcoin was trading above $119,000, the initial price increase was almost 120%. That has pushed up 21% in about 15 months, which is one of the fastest price movements available outside of obvious risks.
Opinions are divided
The Fear and Greed index has sat between 8 and 14 for the past month, deep in the realm of extreme fear. Yet bitcoin ETFs pulled in more than $1 billion net in March.
That combination of extreme fear and strong institutional pricing is unusual. It means that the flow does not change the general confidence, but that the organizations are buying a market in which other participants do not want to be.
The widely followed Coinbase Premium Index confirms this. The metric, which measures whether bitcoin trades at a premium or discount on Coinbase relative to other exchanges and serves as a proxy for the appetite of the US institution, has been forced negative from bitcoin’s all-time high above $126,000 in early October 2025. Even with prices at $65,000 to $70,000 for American customers they have not decreased.
The style of war
The behavioral explanation for the pullback in demand is evident in the price action of the past five weeks. Bitcoin spent the entire war in Iran grinding between $65,000 and $73,000, trading on every rising theme, gathering every descending theme, and ending almost where it started. Monday’s 4% rally on hopes for a ceasefire was reversed on Wednesday after Trump’s address promised to hit Iran “hard.”
The mode of hope, the theme of the news, the change repeats itself in such a regular way that the main strategy has changed to no situation at all. That shows the demand data as a gradual withdrawal rather than panic selling.
The drawdown is pressing, never ending
The current October all-time high above $126,000 is about 47%, much lower than the 84% to 87% downside risks that followed the peaks of 2013 and 2017. Fidelity Digital Assets analyst Zack Wainwright noted in late March that bitcoin’s growth is becoming “very weak,” with a reduced likelihood of extreme events as the asset falls. it is growing.
“Bitcoin’s drawdowns compressing nearly 50% is a sign of a growing market structure,” said Jason Fernandes, co-founder and market analyst at AdLunam. “As capital flows deepen and institutional participation increases, uncertainty naturally puts pressure on both sides and the bottom line.
The pressure drop design is important for the data being searched. If bitcoin continues to grow into an asset where 50% corrections replace 85% risks, then the current contract may not be resolved with the capitulation explosion that marked the bottoms of the previous cycle.
What can change this
The two catalysts sit close together over time.
Morgan Stanley got approval this week for a bitcoin ETF that costs just 14 basis points, 11 below the group average. This product opens up access to 16,000 financial advisors who manage $ 6.2 trillion, a channel that previously did not have direct exposure to a bitcoin ETF.
Strategy’s favorite equity product STRC has seen hundreds of millions around its recent distribution day, providing a way to get cash to collect 44,000 BTC per month. If that repeats and accelerates every month, it adds a new source of sustained buying pressure.
However, it would remain the only company running a strong bitcoin strategy.
CryptoQuant’s own report identifies the possibility of a short-term breakout to $71,500 to $81,200 if the Iran conflict subsides, which is consistent with the resistance areas of the Low Price and the Trader.
These two metrics track the average cost levels of short and active sellers respectively, and have served as ceilings during bear market rallies. Bitcoin is currently trading below both.
The reading across all five sources of data is that the demand for bitcoin is thinning from the inside.
That does not mean that the current site is destroyed, but that the floor depends entirely on whether ETFs, Strategy, and the new channel of Morgan Stanley can continue to absorb what the entire market is trying to eliminate.
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