Bitcoin’s rally towards $75,000 runs into a supply wall, just as institutional demand holds steady.
The move higher is mainly driven by macro flows rather than a broad increase in speculative activity. U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs have continued to draw consistent inflows this month, including about $240 million in a single session following geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, according to market maker Enflux.
That bid helped lift BTC from around $71,000 to the mid-$70,000s, even as traditional markets absorbed rising oil prices and shifting interest rate expectations. The pattern, Enflux noted, reflects allocation behavior rather than momentum hunting.
But as bitcoin pushes higher, the nature of the market begins to change.
On-chain data suggests that supply is starting to emerge more aggressively as prices approach an important cost basis for short-term holders. Around $76,800 is the so-called realized price for recent buyers, actually the average entry point for traders who accumulated during the final phase of the draw, according to CryptoQuant. In weaker market regimes, that level has often acted as resistance as previously underwater investors use rallies to get out at breakeven.
It should be noted that the same band limited January’s rise almost to the dollar before prices turned towards $60,000.
CryptoQuant said bitcoin exchange inflows rose to around 11,000 BTC per hour, the highest since late December, when prices tested the $75,000 to $76,000 range.
At the same time, the average deposit size rose to around 2.25 BTC, the highest daily reading since mid-2024, suggesting that larger holders are driving the move. The proportion of large transfers jumped from under 10% to over 40% of total inflows within days, a shift the firm said has historically coincided with increased distribution pressure.
It creates a two-sided market.
On the one hand, ETF flows and macro tailwinds remain a stable source of demand. On the other hand, large holders appear to be using the rally to reduce exposure and inject liquidity into the market as prices approach a widely watched breakeven zone.
What emerges is less a standoff than a handover. Long-term holders appear to be distributing coins directly to ETF demand – the CryptoQuant flags for exchange inflows and the Enflux traces for ETF inflows are effectively two sides of the same transaction, visible in different datasets.
Whether that transfer goes away depends on whether the new holders prove stickier than those who leave. It is a late cycle pattern and it resolves in one of two ways.
The result is a market that can quickly move higher on inflows, but struggles to maintain those gains as supply grows. A sustained break above the mid-$70,000s will likely require demand to absorb a growing wave of selling pressure. Failure to do so could tip the balance the other way, CryptoQuant writes, leaving bitcoin vulnerable to a pullback toward the low $70,000s where the latest leg of the rally began.
