Listen to the article
Bitcoin’s recent pullback has left a familiar trail of pain on-chain: realized losses have spiked to levels not seen since the shockwaves of the FTX collapse in late 2022, with short-term holders doing most of the bleeding while long-term holders remain largely on the sidelines.
That was the blunt takeaway from analytics firm Glassnode, which flagged the move in a terse X post and an accompanying chart that visualizes the sudden jump in losses attributed to recent buyers. The implication is clear: the market’s stress is concentrated among those who purchased in the past few months and are now closing positions at a loss, rather than long-standing holders capitulating.
Price action has matched the mood. Bitcoin tumbled from its October all-time high north of $126,000 down into the low-$80,000s at the most acute moment of the sell-off, a drawdown of roughly 36%, before wobbling in a choppy range in the $81,000–$92,000 band.
As of the latest prices, BTC is trading in the low $90,000s, reflecting the market’s ongoing struggle to find a stable footing amid thinner liquidity and episodic deleveraging across futures markets. Those price moves helped produce the large, short-lived spikes of realized losses visible on Glassnode’s chart.
On-chain breakdowns show the asymmetry: short-term holders (STHs), typically defined by Glassnode as addresses that have held coins for under roughly 155 days, now hold the bulk of supply in loss, a level not seen since the FTX-era capitulation. Long-term holders (LTHs) have largely sat out the panic, keeping their unrealized losses far smaller in comparison.
That dynamic matters because when recent buyers drive most of the selling, it signals a liquidity- and sentiment-driven correction rather than a fundamental shift in demand among patient, long-duration investors. It also means that the path to a cleaner bottom could run through an extended period of retail and momentum unwinding rather than a single systemic failure.
What to Expect?
Market participants and analysts are split on what comes next. Some on-chain watchers caution that the surge in realized losses and the thinning liquidity profile point to a fragile, late-cycle phase where any further shock could re-ignite sharp downside. Exchange liquidations and elevated short-term realized losses have historically been associated with intensified volatility, and several experts noted that liquidation events recently crossed the billion-dollar mark during the worst of the drop.
At the same time, a number of institutional desks remain bullish on the longer horizon: for example, JPMorgan has argued the path for Bitcoin could still point materially higher over the coming months, citing models that compare BTC’s behavior to gold on a volatility-adjusted basis. That tension, between near-term fragility and longer-term bullish narratives, is keeping traders cautious and opportunistic at once.
Technically, the market appears to be oscillating between consolidation and panic flushes. Traders watching futures and options flows point to deleveraging in the derivatives market and defensive positioning in options as signs that professional liquidity providers are trimming risk, which tends to compress volatility before another leg of directional movement.
For now, critical price levels remain the October highs, which act as an obvious reference for bulls, and the $80,000 area, which has behaved as an attractor during the most recent capitulation. Should buying return at those lower bands with fresh inflows from institutions or renewed retail conviction, realized losses could slow and the market could steady; if not, the current wave of STH-driven selling could continue to pressure spot prices.
What investors should take from the Glassnode signal is pragmatic rather than panicked: the spike in realized losses is a symptom of a short-term unwind, not necessarily a wholesale fracturing of the long-term holder base.
That nuance is important for anyone deciding whether to sit out the market or look for staging points to accumulate. As always with Bitcoin, volatility and abrupt sentiment shifts are part of the ecosystem; the on-chain data is simply showing who is taking the pain this time around.
