Bitcoin is drying up and new money is somewhere else

Bitcoin (BTC) surged marginally on Friday morning after remaining flat over the week due to rising fears of a broader Middle East conflict. This calm has confused the traders, suggesting either an underlying strength or a position on a fault line.

Bitcoin has printed green on the 7-day time frame despite being down by just 0.23% over the last 30 days. Analyst suggests that low volatility, tight price action, and fading retail interest might mean that whales are now settling down the tone.

Retail out, whales in

According to Santiment data, Bitcoin’s elite and mortal wallets are moving in two different directions as the biggest crypto hovered around the $104k-$105 zone. It highlighted that the market added 231 wallets holding more than 10 BTC in the last days (approx. 0.15% surge).

On the other hand, wallets holding 0.001 to 10 Bitcoins saw a drop of around 37,465 wallets over the 10 days. Data mentioned that when large wallets accumulate and retail investors loses confidence, it leads to a historically known combination for bullish momentum to return to the crypto markets.

CryptoQuant’s data reported that short-term holders now have 4.5 million BTC. It has been down by 0.8 million since 27 May. It added that demand momentum has dropped to 2 million BTC, which is said to be the worst on record. This suggests that new money is drying up in Bitcoin.

New money is drying up in Bitcoin.

Short-term holders now hold 4.5M BTC, down 0.8M since 27 May.

Demand momentum sinks to –2M BTC, the worst on record. pic.twitter.com/ollWBXHdll

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) June 20, 2025

Spot ETF demand is still rising, but lagging far behind trend lines. Despite hitting straight 9 days of inflows, the influx has dropped by almost 60% since April. US Spot BTC ETFs have recorded an inflow of $1.02 billion last week and $1.39 billion before the prior week.

Big transfers dominate Bitcoin

Glassnode data hints that beneath Bitcoin’s strong holding over $100k, something surprising is happening as its on-chain activity is unusually quiet. It mentioned that throughout 2023 and 2024, daily Bitcoin transactions surged while peaking at 734k per day. Meanwhile, since the start of 2025, that number has fallen sharply, now ranging between just 320k and 500k transactions per day.

It turns out non-monetary transactions like inscriptions, ordinals, and other blockchain-based data activity have collapsed since January. These were a major driver of last year’s transaction boom. It added that even though fewer transactions are happening, the Bitcoin network is still settling massive amounts of value, averaging $7.5 billion per day. However, it peaked at $16 billion when BTC hit its older ATH last November.

The average value per transaction now sits around $36,200. It is a clear signal that high-value players are continuing to use the network. On-chain data further shows that large transactions over $100K  have grown to dominate the network. These big-ticket transfers accounted for 66% of all Bitcoin volume in late 2022, but now they make up about 89% of it.

Bitcoin price saw a sudden spike over the last 24 hours as it surged to regain the $106k level from the $104k zone. BTC is trading at an average price of $106,029 at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume is still down by 18% to stand at $37.4 billion.

The cumulative crypto market cap posted a marginal jump over the last day to stand at $3.29 trillion with a trading volume of $86.5 billion. The fear and greed index flashes neutral signals with BTC dominance hitting 64.2 %.

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