Bitcoin Retail Interest Still Quiet—Bad News For Rally?

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin demand from the retail investors has recently remained low despite the asset’s rally to the new all-time high.

Bitcoin Retail Investor Demand Hasn’t Grown Much Recently

In a CryptoQuant Quicktake post, an analyst has talked about the latest trend in the 30-day change of the Bitcoin Retail Investor Demand. The Retail Investor Demand refers to an on-chain indicator that tells us, as its name suggests, about the degree of interest that the the smallest of entities in the market, the ‘retail‘ investors, are showing toward the cryptocurrency.

The metric makes use of the transaction volume associated with transfers valued at less than $10,000 as a proxy for demand from traders of this size. Below is a chart that shows how the 30-day change in this volume has looked on the Bitcoin network over the past year:

As is visible in the graph, the 30-day change of the Bitcoin Retail Investor Demand dipped into the negative territory earlier in the year, a sign that the volume associated with the small hands was declining.

In the past month, the metric has turned back positive, implying that these investors have been increasing activity as the asset’s rally has occurred. Though, it’s apparent in the chart that the growth in the indicator hasn’t been anything too great. “This indicates that large investors or institutions are likely driving the rally, while retail participants are yet to join in significantly,” notes the quant.

This is in sharp contrast to how the run from the last couple of months of 2024 was like, where the Retail Investor Demand witnessed some explosive growth, with the 30-day change even crossing the 30% mark at the peak.

Historically, BTC’s price surges have generally only lasted for extended periods when fresh demand from the retail investors has flooded in. As the analyst notes, “sustainable price expansion requires a clear uptick in retail interest.”

That said, while the Retail Investor Demand hasn’t seen a dramatic increase recently, the fact that it has shown at least some improvement could mean that the situation may not be too dire for the current bull run just yet.

It’s possible that this recent increase is merely an early sign for things to come. “If retail volume kicks in over the next few weeks, new ATHs may just be the beginning,” says the quant.

It now remains to be seen how the Bitcoin Retail Investor Demand would develop in the near future.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $107,200, up over 2% in the last seven days.