Spot Bitcoin ETFs listed in the US recorded their sharpest one-day outflow in nearly three weeks on Friday, with $349 million collected from all 11 products, according to Farside.
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The withdrawal comes as Bitcoin bounces back to $68,000 after briefly hitting $74,000 earlier in the week — a move that appears to have triggered a significant wave of selling by large holders, according to on-chain data.
Large holders bought little, then quickly sold
Crypto analytics platform Santiment tracked the behavior of wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 bitcoins — a group commonly referred to as whales — and found that they were building aggressive positions from February 23 to March 3, when prices hovered between $62,900 and $69,600.
When Bitcoin broke above $74,000 on Wednesday, those same wallets started unloading. As of Friday, about 66% of what they had accumulated during that 10-day window had been sold back into the market.
Smaller investors moved in the opposite direction. Wallets holding less than 0.01 bitcoins — the retail end of the market — added to their positions as prices fell.
According to Sentiment, this kind of divergence between large and small holders has historically pointed to more downside ahead.
“When retail buys during whale sales, this usually indicates that the correction is not over yet,” the platform said in a report on Friday.
The fear index falls to its lowest reading in weeks
Bitcoin’s slide on Saturday sent the Crypto Fear & Greed Index down six points to 12, placing it in “Extreme Fear” territory. The index measures market sentiment across a number of factors, including volatility, trading volume and social media activity.
Some analysts said that if buyers do not defend the current price zone, Bitcoin could face another decline. A loss of support at $67,000-$68,000 could prompt a move to recent lows to collect liquidity before any possible recovery.
The case of an economist for the floor of 60 thousand dollars
Not everyone sees the breakdown coming. Economist Timothy Peterson pointed to the Bitcoin Price to Metcalfe Value chart – a model that measures the price of Bitcoin by the estimated value of its network based on user activity – and said that the $60,000 level was the lowest in any previous period.
“There’s about a 99.5% chance it will remain above $60K,” Peterson wrote on X.
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Bitcoin has already tested this level once during this period, falling to $60,000 on February 6th during a broader retracement from a high of $126,000 in October.
Since then, it has made a partial recovery, although the ETF’s exit on Friday and continued whale selling suggest that the market has yet to find solid ground.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView
