Bitcoin Bull Run Already Over? Whales Are Bailing, | Crypto News
CryptoQuant analyst Maartunn used today’s price weak spot to publish a granular, 10-part “Bitcoin Market Analysis” on X that dissects the post-ATH panorama with on-chain element and a clear technical line in the sand. “Bitcoin broke its all-time high, but here’s the catch: long-term holders are [starting] to sell into the strength,” he wrote, including that what issues now is how the market digests that provide above and around the breakout zone. In his framing, the first stress check is underway.
Is The Bitcoin Bull Run Over?
The thread anchors around one headline-grabbing datapoint: “the LTH selling pressure includes the 80,000 BTC sold by the Satoshi-era wallet.” That description is Maartunn’s interpretation of July’s extraordinary motion of eight “ancient” wallets that shifted roughly 80,000 BTC after ~14 years of dormancy via Galaxy Digital.
Beyond the drama of this single entity, Maartunn argues that habits across the holder spectrum is what’s driving the tape. “Retail is stepping in after the ATH,” he famous, describing a acquainted sample of late-cycle enthusiasm that adopted Bitcoin’s push through $120,000 in mid-July. That surge set a new report close to $123,000 before momentum pale; spot costs are now revolving around $113,000–$115,000.
The bid didn’t vanish completely. “Fresh capital did help the ATH-breakout buyers,” Maartunn wrote, pointing to balance-sheet demand “from firms like Strategy and Metaplanet.” Those purchases are verifiable. Strategy—the rebranded MicroStrategy—disclosed 21,021 BTC purchased between July 28 and Aug. 3 at an average of ~$117,256, lifting its holdings to ~628,791 BTC. Tokyo-listed Metaplanet added 463 BTC on Aug. 4, taking treasury holdings to 17,595 BTC. Even so, those company flows “weren’t enough to hold Bitcoin around the ~$120k level,” the analyst said.
Where the thread turns more cautionary is on short-term fingers. “Short-Term Holders started to puke and sell at a loss,” Maartunn wrote, quantifying realized-loss waves of 52,230 BTC (July 15–18), 42,493 BTC (July 24–28), and 70,028 BTC “after July 31.” He called the last episode notable “not just [for] the size, but the duration,” arguing that extended STH loss-realization is a stress valve that sometimes wants time to exhaust. These are Maartunn’s on-chain tallies; they haven’t been individually revealed by data distributors in mixture type.
The flows image from listed merchandise has begun to rhyme with that stress. “ETFs are also seeing outflows,” he noticed. Multiple trackers affirm a downswing: CoinShares logged the first web weekly outflow in 15 weeks (-$223 million) with Bitcoin funds main at -$404 million, while daily tallies this week show US spot Bitcoin ETFs bleeding for a number of classes, including about -$196 million on Tuesday. Framing differs by window, but the direction is clear: the bid from ETFs is wobbling at the margin.
Technically, Maartunn fixes consideration on the previous breakout zone. “Bitcoin is finding support around its previous ATH — roughly $112K,” he wrote, pointing to a confluence between chart construction and on-chain price-distribution. His on-chain map “backs it up,” flagging “strong support in the $108K–$112K range,” an space where a large quantity of cash last modified fingers.
Context issues. Bitcoin’s July all-time high sits around $123,000 on major benchmarks—an extension of 2025’s institutional-heavy advance—so calling $112,000 a “previous ATH” refers to the nearer-term breakout plateau that preceded price discovery, not absolutely the report. That nuance is why Maartunn concludes with a conditional: “So far this cycle, we haven’t seen any previous ATH break down… Until that changes, this looks like a normal pullback. But if we do break below a former ATH ($112k), that’s a real shift in market behavior.”
In the close to time period, the credibility of that ~$108,000–$112,000 “shelf” will probably be determined by whether or not provide from profit-taking long-term holders, loss-realizing short-term holders, and ETF redemptions continues to outweigh balance-sheet demand and natural spot inflows. If the shelf holds, Maartunn’s base case is “a normal pullback” that bleeds off excesses from the ATH push. If it fails decisively, he argues, the cycle could be displaying its first significant breach of a prior breakout—an observable change in habits fairly than a narrative flip of phrase.
At press time, BTC traded at $114,238.
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