Bitcoin Bear Market Bottom Builds as Holders Absorb 43% of Losses

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• Bitcoin has spent five months below its key on-chain cost levels, a zone Glassnode describes as deep value territor
• Long-term holders now account for nearly half of all realized losses across the network.
• ETF outflows have slowed noticeably, though institutional trading activity remains a fraction of last year’s peak.
• Analyst targets for the cycle low range from a deep crash scenario to the view that the floor is already behind us.

Bitcoin may be approaching the end of its current downturn, but the recovery has not been confirmed yet, according to a Glassnode report titled “Bottom Building in Progress” published on Wednesday. The on-chain analytics firm points to a market that has traded below its two most watched cost-basis levels for roughly five months, while long-term holders keep selling coins at a loss on a scale unseen since the depths of the 2022 bear market. The price, currently around $62,000 after a bounce from $58,300 to $64,400 over the past week, sits well under the True Market Mean at $76,600 and the short-term holder cost basis at $72,200. Until buyers reclaim those levels, Glassnode treats every rally as suspect.

Why long-term holders are driving the heaviest loss wave since December 2022

The most striking shift in the data concerns investors who normally sell last. Glassnode found that long-term holders are responsible for the largest share of realized losses in the market, a share that has climbed from 15% in early February to 43%. Most of these coins were bought near the October 2025 peak of $126,000, held through months of decline, and are now being sold into weakness by owners who simply got tired of waiting.

The firm’s Entity-Adjusted Long-Term Holder Realized Loss indicator peaked at around $280 million in daily losses, its highest reading since December 2022, marking the second major selling wave of this downturn. Unlike the first wave, this one has not yet shown meaningful signs of easing. In 2022, the final capitulation of older coins preceded the actual price low by several weeks, but the low only formed once that selling exhausted itself. The current wave is still running.

There is a counterweight forming underneath. Glassnode analyst Chris Beamish wrote in early July that long-term holders have returned to net accumulation across wallet cohorts, including entities holding between 100 and 1,000 BTC, and that more Bitcoin now sits at a loss than in profit for the first time this drawdown, roughly 10.83 million BTC underwater against 9.22 million in profit. The same cohort is simultaneously selling old, deeply underwater coins and buying new ones at current prices. Supply is changing hands, which is precisely what a bottoming process looks like on-chain.

Wall Street pulled $4.5 billion in June, then the bleeding slowed

Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $4.5 billion in June, their worst month since launching in January 2024, with BlackRock’s IBIT alone accounting for $3.55 billion of the outflows, according to data compiled by The Block.

The pace of withdrawal has since dropped sharply. Glassnode reported that average daily outflows peaked at $193 million in early June and have slowed to around $88.9 million per day, though outflows still exceed inflows. Daily ETF trading volume has stayed between $650 million and $950 million, far below the $4.4 billion daily peak recorded in October 2025. Roughly 80% of institutional trading activity has evaporated. That drop looks like capitulation on a chart and like indifference on a trading desk. The direction of the flow data improved right at the start of the month, though: SoSoValue recorded renewed inflows beginning July 2, the first sustained positive prints since the outflow trend began in May.

Options traders stopped shorting but still pay for protection

Options data pulls in two directions at the moment. Bitcoin’s options put/call ratio has fallen to 0.56, its lowest level of 2026, meaning traders hold more call options than puts. Active demand for short exposure has largely dried up. At the same time, options traders continue to pay elevated prices for downside protection, and Bitcoin trades about 6% below the options market’s $66,000 max pain level.

The put/call ratio counts how positioning splits between bearish and bullish contracts, while skew shows what traders actually pay for each side. A low ratio with expensive puts describes a market where almost nobody bets on a crash anymore, yet nobody trusts the floor enough to drop their insurance. That combination tends to appear late in bear markets, after the aggressive shorts have taken profit and before genuine risk appetite returns.

Where analysts place the cycle low

The forecast spread among institutional researchers remains unusually wide:

• Stifel Financial – target $38,000. Chief equity strategist Barry Bannister drew a trendline through every major Bitcoin crash bottom since 2010 and extended it to the current cycle, arguing tighter Fed policy and Bitcoin’s high correlation with the Nasdaq justify further downside.
• K33 Research – floor already in at $60,000. Head of research Vetle Lunde argues the 2025 bull market was less aggressive than prior cycles, making an 80%-plus collapse structurally unlikely, with a base case of consolidation between $60,000 and $75,000.
• Willy Woo and other cycle analysts cluster their bottom timing around October 2026, which would match the roughly 12-month duration of the 2018 and 2022 bear markets measured from the October 2025 peak.

The three signals that would confirm the bottom

Glassnode’s own framework sets out what confirmation requires, and none of the three conditions has been met in full. Long-term holder loss realization needs to cool substantially from the current $280 million daily peaks. ETF flows need to hold positive for more than a few sessions, not just narrow their losses. And price needs to reclaim $72,200 first, then $76,600, on convincing volume rather than thin weekend liquidity. Until then, the firm warns that Bitcoin could still slide toward the Realized Price near $53,000 if selling pressure returns.

One seasonal detail works in the market’s favor over the coming weeks. QCP analysts note that July has historically been one of Bitcoin’s strongest months, with average gains of about 7.5%, and the early-July combination of returning ETF inflows and softening spot selling gives that pattern something concrete to build on. The next test arrives at $66,000, where options positioning concentrates. How price behaves around that level into the late-July expiries will show whether this bounce has buyers behind it or just an absence of sellers.