BTC’s black Friday comes early as market awaits catalyst to avoid bigger drop

Bitcoin’s recent rally is showing signs of fatigue and could tank below its current levels if there’s no fresh catalyst, according to analytics firm Glassnode.

Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin’s price saw heavy volatility, treading back to $116,000 before being rejected and falling back to test $110,000. The market has struggled to keep the upward traction going, and the king coin is currently hovering within a narrowing range of uncertainty from retail traders and institutions.

Bitcoin’s upward momentum close to exhaustion, Glassnode predicts

When US President Donald Trump reignited tariff tensions with China at the end of last week, Bitcoin plunged from over $122,000 to around $101,000 on Bitstamp. The sudden crash caused a panic-selling spree in the market, erasing over $20 billion in leveraged positions, Cryptopolitan reported.

Per Glassnode’s Wednesday report, over 1.6 million traders were caught in the bloodbath, with total liquidations exceeding $19 billion in a 24-hour period, the largest recorded to date. Most altcoins followed Bitcoin’s decline, deepening the losses for traders who had piled long bets during the rally’s euphoric phase.

CoinGecko data shows Bitcoin bounced back above $110,000 early Saturday and climbed steadily through the weekend, reaching $116,000 by Tuesday morning. But the rally quickly lost steam when sellers took the market by the neck, pushing the price back down $110,000 at Wednesday’s close.

“Without a renewed catalyst to lift prices back above $117.1k, the market risks deeper contraction toward the lower boundary of this range,” Glassnode said in its Wednesday report. 

Per Glassnode’s insight, it is the third time since late August that Bitcoin’s spot price has slipped below the 0.95-quantile level near $117,100, where roughly 5% of total supply that is mostly held by top buyers sits at a loss.

Profit-taking among long-term holders

Glassnode’s long-term holder (LTH) supply chart has dropped by approximately 300,000 BTC since July. The research concluded that seasoned investors are taking profits by reducing their exposure, which is limiting upside momentum for the largest coin by market cap.

“Historically, when price fails to hold this zone, it has often preceded prolonged mid- to long-term corrections,” Glassnode noted.

Such distribution phases, while not unusual during high valuations, can significantly alter the short-term supply-demand balance. When mature investors lock in gains, fresh capital must step in to sustain price levels —a dynamic that is currently missing due to the heightened macroeconomic uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.

According to Glassnode’s notes, cumulative spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) net flows have turned negative by roughly 2,300 BTC this week, one of the most notable slowdowns since mid-year.

“The current moderation suggests hesitation rather than panic, and sustained weakness or a prolonged delay in ETF inflows returning to strength would signal demand-side fragility,” the market analytics platform wrote.

During the earlier phases of the bull market, consistent inflows into ETFs from major asset managers helped propel Bitcoin to record levels. But since that is currently lacking, the crypto might need another sentiment mover or catalyst to get back up to $120,000.

Inflows to the funds may have cooled down, but spot trading volumes ticked upwards since Friday’s liquidation event. According to Glassnode’s spot volume on exchanges charts, BTC reserves on trading platforms reached about $1.5 billion, one of the highest levels seen since April, the so-called tariff “Month of Liberation.” 

Glassnode’s Cumulative Volume Delta Bias (CVDB) metric, which measures deviations from a 90-day median of trade flows, revealed that Binance saw pronounced taker-side sell pressure within the last week. Coinbase registered the different side which is net buying activity, showing institutional and US-based investors were in more of an accumulation mood.

Technical chart reader Crypto VIP Signal wrote on X that Bitcoin’s price is moving within a triangle pattern, marking $109,000 as its support. If the price fails to hold above this threshold, traders could revert back to panic mode and sell their positions.

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