Original Title: Top Buyers Under Stress

Original Authors: CryptoVizArt, UkuriaOC, Glassnode

Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

The Bitcoin trading price is close to $111,000, testing the key support level at $107,000–$108,900. A rebound to $113,600 may face sustained selling pressure, with a potential deeper drop target of $93,000–$95,000. The current loss magnitude is still relatively shallow, spot demand is neutral, and perpetual contracts lean bearish but exhibit mild performance.

Summary

· Bitcoin has retraced to $111,000, with support anchored at the cost basis cluster of $93,000–$110,000. Breaking below $107,000–$108,900 could open up downside potential, with a target of $93,000–$95,000.

· Short-term holders are still under pressure, so any rebound to $113,600 may face resistance as they sell during the rebound.

· Unrealized and realized losses are still relatively shallow, far from reaching extreme levels seen in past bear markets, indicating limited selling behavior so far.

· Spot demand has neutralized, while perpetual futures lean bearish, and funding rates exhibit a fragile neutral state.

Filling the Gap

As the market enters the second week of retracement from the $124,000 all-time high, a question arises: is this just a brief pause or the beginning of a deeper retracement? To answer this question, we turn to the price model, starting with the Cost Basis Distribution (CBD) heatmap.

The CBD heatmap provides a visual representation of the concentration of supply at different price levels, highlighting a crucial part of the token's last hands. Each color band reflects a dense area of cost basis, which often serves as a natural support or resistance zone.

Currently, the Bitcoin trading price is close to $111,000, hovering above the "price gap." The recent retracement allows for a discounted supply reallocation, gradually filling the gap. It is worth noting that since December 2024, a thick supply cluster has formed between $93,000 and $110,000, gradually shaping up as a potential bottom.

This accumulation helps explain the ongoing resilience above $110,000, indicating that further correction either needs significant short-term selling pressure or longer-term demand absence to be sufficient to make these investors surrender to selling.

Testing New Buyers' Patience

To better gauge the market's despondency, we turn to recent investors' cost basis. This metric captures the average acquisition price of holders who entered the market in the past 1 to 6 months as a psychological benchmark. When the market trades below these levels, it typically indicates that new holders are falling into unrealized losses, a status that could trigger selling pressure.

Currently, Bitcoin is trading below the 1-month ($115,600) and 3-month ($113,600) holders' cost bases, putting these investors under pressure. Therefore, any relief rally could face resistance as short-term holders look to exit at breakeven.

Moreso, the 6-month cost basis is around $107,000. A continued breach of this level could trigger fear, accelerating downside momentum, pointing to the lower edge of the support supply clusters highlighted in the CBD heatmap.

Medium-Term Risk

If the current weakness persists, with prices trading below the short-term holders' cost basis near $108,900, historical precedence suggests caution. In past cycles, such breakdowns have usually signaled the start of a multi-month bear phase as new investors sell off amid increasing unrealized losses.

Frame this risk through a 4-year statistical lens, previous bear retracements have typically bottomed out near one standard deviation below the short-term holders' cost basis. For this cycle, that floor is estimated around $95,100. Therefore, if Bitcoin fails to reclaim footing above the $107,000–$108,900 threshold, the potential mid-term bottoming range could be in the $93,000–$95,000 region, aligning with the dense support clusters earlier emphasized in the CBD heatmap.

Previous Cyclical Bear Markets

To put the current pain level into perspective, we can compare today's market structure to previous cyclical extremes. Historical bear markets have been marked by severe retracements that either defined a mid-term reset or were full-blown sell-off events.

So far, the recent drop to $110,100 represents about an 11.4% retracement from the $124,000 all-time high. Compared to prior mid-term bear markets (often exceeding 25%) or deep cyclical lows (losses exceeding 75%), the current decline is notably mild. In this context, the current correction's intensity remains relatively shallow, not yet akin to the pressure seen in historical extremes.

Measuring Pain Through Unrealized Loss

Another way to measure the current correction is through Relative Unrealized Loss, which measures the total market loss relative to market cap. This indicator highlights the scale of pressure investors are experiencing compared to previous cycles.

Since November 2023, the Relative Unrealized Loss has mostly stayed below the -0.5 standard deviation level, around 5%, never approaching the depths observed during the long bear markets of 2018–2020 or 2022–2023.

Currently, with Bitcoin trading near $111,000, this indicator is only at 0.5%, well below the loss levels (>30%) typically associated with deep bear market phases. This perspective reinforces the earlier conclusion: although recent pullbacks have made short-term holders frustrated, the magnitude of unrealized pain in the overall market has not come close to historical extremes.

Realized Selling Pressure

While Unrealized Loss provides one view of observing investor pressure, it is equally important to observe how much of these paper losses are actually being realized on-chain. The Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR) provides this insight by measuring the ratio of token spent price to its cost basis. A value above 1 indicates profits are being realized, while a value below 1 indicates tokens are being sold at a loss, a sign of selling pressure.

Currently, the 7-day moving average of adjusted SOPR is near the neutral value of 1. This suggests that most active investors have neither realized significant profits nor realized losses, signaling uncertainty.

Historically, cyclical bottoms have only been confirmed when this indicator is below 0.98, marking widespread selling across the entire market. The current lack of such signals indicates that despite heightened anxiety, the market has not yet experienced deep loss realization defining a true bear market bottom.

Spot Market Neutralization

After establishing statistical boundaries of potential price outcomes through on-chain analysis, we can turn to off-chain data to assess sentiment from the exchange order book perspective. One useful view is Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD), which tracks the net difference between trades initiated by buyers and sellers and then aggregates this imbalance into a cumulative signal.

To measure the shift in spot market behavior, we compare the 30-day moving average of CVD with its 180-day median. On major venues like Coinbase and Binance, as well as in aggregated exchange flows, this bias has recently converged towards zero. This represents a significant departure from the strong buy pressure observed in April 2025, which propelled the rebound from $72,000. While a slight positive in July helped drive the rebound to $124,000, the broader trend now reflects neutralization of spot sentiment, indicating weakening buyer conviction at current levels.

Perpetual Contract Bias Towards Bearish

Contrary to the neutral tone in the spot market, the situation in perpetual futures has decisively shifted towards bearish. Since July, the CVD bias on Binance, Bybit, and aggregated exchanges has declined into negative territory, indicating an increasing imbalance in selling pressure. This suggests that perpetual traders (usually the more speculative part of the market) have been inclined to short during the recent pullback.

In other words, this indicator is highly volatile, often swinging between extreme buying and selling pressures in the short term. While the current bias highlights a growing bearish trend, it should be closely monitored to confirm whether this negativity is a sustained trend or proves to be a fleeting oscillation within the perpetual contract market.

Fragile Neutrality

To gauge the broader sentiment in the perpetual market, we can pair CVD analysis with the funding rate, which tracks the cost of holding long and short positions. The 7-day moving average funding rate on major exchanges is currently around 0.01%.

This pattern suggests that while some leveraged traders are attempting to buy the dip, their longs are not sufficient to tip the overall balance. Instead, the market remains in a state of fragile neutrality, where a moderate increase in selling pressure could quickly shift sentiment towards bearish.

Conclusion

Bitcoin's retracement to $111,000 has stress-tested a key range in the market. Recent investor cost bases between $107,000 and $108,900 mark a critical support, a breach of which would open the path to $93,000–$95,000, where a dense cluster of supply may form a midterm bottom. A rebound to $113,600 is possible but may face resistance as short-term holders under pressure to break even start selling during strength.

Meanwhile, unrealized and realized losses remain shallow, the SOPR has not signaled widespread selling. On-chain, spot demand has neutralized, while perpetual futures exhibit a bearish and fragile bias. In summary, compared to past cycles, the current correction is mild, but buying conviction has waned, keeping the market balanced between resilience and further downside.

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