Bitcoin (BTC) starts the last week of August far from all-time highs as traders become increasingly nervous.
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A huge long liquidation event brought $110,000 back into play as a new CME gap becomes a hope for bulls.
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Bitcoin whales are under scrutiny after a giant rotation from BTC into ETH.
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Smaller hodlers remain in accumulation mode, analysis reveals, unlike whales.
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The latest BTC price action has resulted in talk of the entire bull market now being over.
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The Fed’s “preferred” inflation gauge is due again as markets double down on rate-cut bets.
BTC price weakness sparks talk of $100,000 retest
Bitcoin is back at multi-week lows as August nears its end, and market participants are busy drawing new BTC price targets.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows whipsaw BTC price action defining the market since Sunday’s flash volatility.
This took BTC/USD to $110,700, its lowest levels since July 10 and a rude wake-up call for late longs.
Monitoring resource CoinGlass put 24-hour crypto long liquidations at $640 million at the time of writing.
Traders were split on the short-term outlook. While some eyed a retest of old all-time highs as a bounce point, others saw a more nuanced situation.
Trader Daan Crypto Trades flagged an “important retest” currently in progress.
“$BTC Opened up with a large CME gap today,” he noted, referring to the weekend gap in CME Group’s Bitcoin futures market.
“This is the largest we’ve seen in several weeks. We have been opening up with gaps pretty often and most of these have been filling on Monday/Tuesday.”
Fellow trader Jelle was among those seeing a trip to even lower levels.
“Bitcoin is still murdering leveraged traders around the range lows, and from the looks of it, the sharks are still hungry,” he warned.
“Would really prefer price holds this area, or we’ll fall back into the previous range which would open us up to another retest of $100k.”
CoinGlass exchange order-book data revealed little bid support in place immediately below the price into the week’s first Wall Street open.
Last week, Cointelegraph reported on an analyst’s conviction of over $100,000 staying in place, even unchallenged, as support.
Bitcoin OG: Whale distribution “healthy”
Sunday’s sudden BTC price dive brought Bitcoin whales back into focus.
Current levels, still within 10% of all-time highs, have proven attractive to large players seeking to take profit on long-held coins.
The weekend saw one entity sell a giant tranche of BTC after seven years, tanking the market $4,000 in minutes, a drop from which it has yet to recover.
Data from crypto intelligence firm Arkham uploaded to X by analytics account Lookonchain showed the entity rotating from Bitcoin into Ether.
“In the past 5 days, they’ve deposited ~22,769 $BTC($2.59B) to Hyperliquid for sale, then bought 472,920 $ETH($2.22B) spot and opened a 135,265 $ETH($577M) long,” it summarized while relaying the BTC and ETH addresses involved.
The entity’s BTC is now worth around $11.4 billion, a profit margin of 1,675%.
“No paper BTC conspiracies are required. The price has stalled because a number of whales have hit their magic number and are unloading,” Bitcoin enthusiast Vijay Boyapati commented on the event.
“This is healthy – their supply is finite and their selling is required for the full monetization of Bitcoin. Massive blocks of supply, with enormous purchasing power, are being distributed into the population. This cycle is one of the greatest monetization events in history.”
Statistician Willy Woo, who made headlines last month for his own BTC sales, underscored the sway that the oldest whales still have on market dynamics.
“Why is BTC moving up so slowly this cycle?” he queried alongside a chart.
“BTC supply is concentrated around OG whales who peaked their holdings in 2011 (orange and dark orange). They bought their BTC at $10 or lower. It takes $110k+ of new capital to absorb each BTC they sell.”
As Cointelegraph reported, whale distribution has been evident throughout the latest phase of the bull run.
Data from onchain analytics firm Glassnode confirmed that as of Sunday, there were 2,000 addresses with a balance of between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC, corresponding to all but the largest “mega” whales. This marked a new August high.
Smaller Bitcoin hodlers continue accumulating
Looking into other wallet cohorts, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant sees reasons for bulls to stay hopeful about a rebound.
Distribution, it warned Monday, is not yet in full swing across the Bitcoin investor spectrum.
“After reaching its ATH at 124K, Bitcoin has entered a pullback phase,”…
cointelegraph.com