Bitcoin traded just above $83,300 in Asian hours Wednesday, down from an eight-month high near $87,400, even as CryptoQuant’s Bull Score gauge hit 90 out of 100, a reading the on-chain firm treats as near-confirmation of a bull market. The gap between the bullish indicator and fading buying pressure is the story traders are watching ahead of a heavy US data day.
The Bull Score rolls on-chain and market indicators into a single reading. It jumped after bitcoin broke above its 365-day moving average last week, a break CryptoQuant counts as bull-market confirmation. Price has since moved the other way, and the firm’s own data explains why.
Spot demand contracted by roughly 170,000 BTC over the past 30 days. Growth in speculative futures demand fell from about 164,000 BTC on September 14 to 16,000 BTC on September 29, a 90 percent drop in 15 days. Recent buyers hold an average unrealized profit of 33 percent, the widest since December 2024, and they locked in gains on 25,700 BTC on September 22, the largest single day of profit-taking this year.
“Without fresh demand, rallies struggle to extend,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, wrote in the report. “With spot demand still in contraction and futures growth stalling, near-term upside becomes harder to sustain.”
Altcoin supply piles up on exchanges
The selling pressure is not limited to bitcoin. CryptoQuant counted 76,000 altcoin deposits to exchanges over seven days, the most since October 2025, sent from 51,000 separate addresses. Coins on an exchange can be sold within seconds, so that supply sits within easy reach of any bounce.
Majors were mixed in Asian trading. SOL and ZEC led, each up nearly 2 percent, to about $119 and just above $1,400. XRP gained about 1 percent to just under $1.50. Ether, BNB and TRX each added less than 1 percent. ZEC’s move came after a volatile week in which the token ran to $1,683 before slipping about 12 percent as funding rates turned negative and leveraged longs unwound.
The $84,000 wall and the ETF cost basis
Two price levels frame the near-term picture. Above, Glassnode’s September 23 report identified $84,000 to $85,000 as the largest cluster of long-term-holder supply. Bitcoin traded above that zone when the report was published; it now sits below it. Below, Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart estimated on September 21 that the average spot Bitcoin ETF holder has a cost basis of $81,722, meaning a decline of about 2.2 percent from the mid-$83,000s would put the average ETF buyer back at a loss.
ETF flows have already cooled sharply. Daily inflows sank to $31 million from last week’s record pace, according to site data published Tuesday. CryptoQuant separately notes unrealized profit across holders sits at a 21-month high, which historically feeds profit-taking into strength. Not every large holder has joined the selling. Whale wallets and ETF buyers kept accumulating through Tuesday’s dip below $83,500, per on-chain trackers, which is part of why the pullback has stayed orderly rather than turning into a rout.
Inflation data decides the day
The macro calendar dominates Wednesday. ADP’s September private employment report lands at 8:15 a.m. ET, fifteen minutes before the August PCE price index and a third estimate of second-quarter GDP at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus expects headline PCE up 0.5 percent month on month and core PCE up 0.3 percent, leaving headline at 3.7 percent year on year, far above the Fed’s 2 percent target.
The Fed raised rates by 25 basis points on September 16, its first hike in three years, and markets price roughly 70 percent odds of another hike on October 28. A hotter PCE print would lift yields and pressure risk assets including bitcoin. A softer one could pull yields down and give crypto its first genuine macro tailwind in weeks.
The 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 5.24 percent Wednesday after hitting 5.293 percent, its highest since June 2007, on Tuesday. The 30-year touched 5.6206 percent, the highest since 2002. Between September 22 and 29 the 10-year rose 30 basis points while the 2-year barely moved, a long-end steepening that analysts read as repricing of long-run fiscal and inflation risk rather than a recession trade.
Wall Street has handled the bond selloff better than crypto has. The S&P 500 closed Tuesday at 7,670.84, down just 0.17 percent, and remains close to recent highs despite the 10-year yield climbing above 5 percent. Bitcoin, with no yield of its own, has taken the hit more directly, sliding below $83,500 on Tuesday before stabilizing.
The mood outside markets is souring too. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 81.9 in September, the weakest reading since 2014, with households expecting conditions to worsen over the next six months amid the Iran war and rising borrowing costs. Consumer-facing weakness tends to reach crypto through risk appetite rather than through any direct channel, but it adds to the list of headwinds stacked against a fresh leg up.
For now, the setup is a market with a bullish long-term indicator and a bearish short-term flow picture, waiting on one inflation print to pick a direction. The $81,722 ETF basis and the $84,000 holder zone bracket the likely range. A move below the basis would flip the average ETF buyer to a loss and likely accelerate stop-outs; a sustained break above the holder zone would say more about fresh demand than any single-day spike.