Bitcoin slides toward fifth straight monthly loss as $4.5B ETF outflows put $58,000 on the line
Bitcoin is heading toward an uncomfortable milestone, a possible fifth consecutive monthly decline if February closes in the purple, and the setup is beginning to look much less like a crypto-specific drawdown and extra like a macro-driven repricing.
This five-month shedding streak can be notable in the post-ETF era and would even be Bitcoin’s longest stretch of monthly declines since 2018, when it posted six consecutive down months throughout the bear market.
At underneath $63,000, BTC is down by nearly 20% this month, which is its largest monthly drawdown since June 2022.
However, the adverse value streak itself isn’t the foremost story.
The larger shift is that Bitcoin is being priced in a special regime, one the place ETF flows, fee expectations, and cross-asset threat sentiment are carrying extra weight than crypto-native catalysts.
As a end result, BTC merchants are not centered on the timing of a return to new highs. Instead, the debate has shifted to the place the subsequent sturdy bid sits, and the degree attracting the most consideration is $58,000.
A market pushed by ETF flows, positioning and macro
Over the previous a number of weeks, Bitcoin has traded much less like a standalone digital asset and extra like a high-beta risk instrument.
That distinction issues as a result of it modifications how merchants learn the tape.
In a crypto-led market, narratives round adoption, protocol upgrades, or long-term shortage can dominate short-term value motion.
In the present setup, the key inputs are extra acquainted to macro merchants, move information, choices positioning, and broader threat urge for food.
That shift exhibits up most clearly in ETF habits.
When spot Bitcoin ETFs had been taking in regular inflows, pullbacks had been usually met with computerized demand. Those flows acted as a cushion, not as a result of sentiment had turned bullish, however as a result of the construction itself required shopping for.
Now the reverse dynamic is in place. Persistent outflows don’t simply take away help; they’ll change into a supply of provide strain.
This 12 months, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen greater than $4.5 billion in internet outflows, an indication that institutional demand by means of the ETF wrapper stays underneath strain even as components of the market proceed to search for a ground.
That is a big shift in marginal demand, and it helps clarify why rebounds have struggled to carry.
Data from CryptoQuant additional buttresses the case for why spot Bitcoin ETFs have become integral to BTC’s price performance.
Since May 2025, day by day buying and selling quantity in Bitcoin spot ETFs has exceeded the mixed quantity of world centralized exchanges. Today, 55% of all daily Bitcoin spot trading volume comes from ETFs.
Essentially, institutional flows have now change into the market’s dominant liquidity channel and are not one a part of the market.
That shifts the market’s middle of gravity, as retail traders more and more react to a price-discovery course of led by Wall Street.
The result’s a tape that appears extra like a macro asset underneath stress, decrease highs, repeated exams of help, and a market that retains revisiting the identical value zones till both the move backdrop improves or a stronger ground is established.
Why $58,000 has change into the key stress-test degree
The rising focus on $58,000 isn’t a few single chart sample. It displays a convergence of frameworks.
The first is a long-cycle technical construction. The 200-week EMA stays one in all the most generally watched regime markers in Bitcoin.
In previous bear phases and late-cycle resets, value motion close to that degree has usually compelled a broader reassessment, whether or not it is a correction inside an uptrend or the begin of a deeper repricing.
The second is on-chain cost-basis gravity. Below the contested zone, merchants are watching combination cost-basis measures, together with realized-price kind anchors.
When Bitcoin begins transferring toward the common embedded buy value of holders, habits tends to vary.
Some traders reduce threat and lock in losses. Others step in as a result of the value appears to be like cheaper relative to the community’s buy historical past.
The third is the demand cluster in the present vary.
Recent on-chain evaluation factors to a contested zone between $60,000 and $69,000, the place demand has been absorbing repeated promote strain.
If that zone breaks cleanly, $58,000 turns into the subsequent clearer reference level, sitting beneath the cluster and above deeper cost-basis anchors.
That is why $58,000 is finest understood as a stress check, not essentially the remaining ground.
If the market holds there, it may possibly change into the begin of a base. If it fails, consideration can shift shortly toward deeper on-chain ranges in the mid-$50,000 space.
Options markets present organized draw back demand, not panic
Derivatives information reinforces why $58,000 has change into the point of interest.
Data from Deribit exhibits a steady downtrend in the present vary, and merchants in the options market have continued to place for draw back by means of safety trades and bearish expressions.
The construction of these trades issues as a result of it helps clarify what sort of transfer contributors are bracing for.
According to the agency, BTC’s put skew is again to Feb. 5 ranges, and implied volatility is buying and selling greater than 10% above realized volatility on a seven-day measure.
That mixture factors to sturdy demand for draw back safety, and it’s occurring with out a contemporary spot collapse of the identical scale as the Feb. 5 transfer.
The demand is concentrated round $58,000 strikes. Traders have been lively in 58,000 places, put spreads, and threat reversals, with the derivatives market more and more organized round that degree as the foremost draw back reference.
Deribit identified that the clearest instance got here with the addition of March 6, 58,000 places, the place about $200 million in notional was purchased for about $2 million in premium.
That issues as a result of it suggests funds are positioning for a decrease grind, not essentially a sudden capitulation.
In a grinding market, put spreads and threat reversals might be extra environment friendly than outright places, as a result of they scale back premium prices and lengthen the length of the commerce’s potential payoff.
At the identical time, Galaxy Digital’s Head of Research Alex Thorn said Bitcoin is nearing all-time oversold territory.
Thorn stated the weekly RSI is decrease than at any level outdoors what he referred to as the darkest bear phases, and he flagged the solely decrease readings since 2016 as Nov./Dec. 2018, when Bitcoin fell from roughly $6,000 to $3,000, and Jun./Jul. 2022, throughout the Three Arrows Capital collapse and the interval earlier than Genesis’ insolvency grew to become clear.
That doesn’t assure a rebound, but it surely does body the present setup as statistically stretched, even when the market nonetheless wants a catalyst to stabilize.
On-chain information exhibits the place deeper ache and help may emerge
CryptoQuant data on long-term holders provides one other layer to the market’s resolution tree.
According to the agency, long-term holders (LTHs), a cohort that’s typically much less delicate to short-term value fluctuations, are nonetheless sitting on a mean revenue of roughly 74%.
That means the cohort isn’t but underneath broad stress, however the margin is shrinking as spot value drifts decrease.
CryptoQuant estimates the LTH price foundation at about $38,900, and that determine is rising over time as short-term holders who purchased at increased costs age into the long-term class.
In different phrases, the ache threshold isn’t mounted. It climbs with the cycle.
Historically, CryptoQuant famous that bear markets have usually featured a break beneath the LTH price foundation, adopted by a remaining capitulation part marked by realized losses of about 20%.
That has often been the type of washout that clears leverage and permits a extra sturdy rebuild.
CryptoQuant cautioned that this was solely an commentary primarily based on a restricted variety of occurrences. That caveat issues, particularly in the present cycle.
The structure of Bitcoin ownership has modified. Institutions, company entities, and sovereign actors now play a bigger position than in prior cycles.
Those contributors convey totally different mandates, time horizons, and liquidity profiles, and people structural modifications may alter how the market behaves round conventional on-chain ache factors.
That is one purpose the mid-$50,000 to $60,000 space is so essential.
It might serve as the zone the place old-cycle patterns and new-cycle market construction meet, and the place merchants discover out whether or not institutional participation softens the drawdown or just amplifies it by means of ETF flows and macro-sensitive positioning.
The subsequent transfer relies upon on whether or not the market can restore, or has to flush
The cleanest technique to body Bitcoin into the month-end is as a set of paths, not a single forecast.
The base case is an orderly grind. Bitcoin continues to commerce inside the contested $60,000 to $69,000 area, with sharp intraday swings however no decisive break.
February closes purple, the five-month shedding streak turns into official, and the market treats the transfer as a reset slightly than a collapse.
That path would possible require ETF outflows to maintain slowing, spot promoting strain to ease, and choices markets to remain defensive with out a contemporary spike in volatility.
The bear case is a mechanical flush. A break beneath the $60,000 demand zone triggers stop-losses and systematic promoting, and value strikes into the $58,000 check.
If the 200-week EMA fails to draw sufficient demand, focus would shift to deeper cost-basis anchors in the mid-$50,000 vary.
In this state of affairs, the catalyst isn’t essentially a crypto-specific shock. It is sustained ETF bleeding, weaker threat sentiment throughout markets, and a derivatives market that retains paying up for draw back safety.
The bull case is a flow-led reclaim. Bitcoin holds the present demand zone, ETF flows stabilize after which flip constructive, and choices skew begins to normalize.
That would enable value to maneuver again toward increased on-chain imply ranges related to extra expansionary situations.
In that setup, the streak ends not as a result of sentiment improves first, however as a result of the marginal purchaser returns.
The put up Bitcoin slides toward fifth straight monthly loss as $4.5B ETF outflows put $58,000 on the line appeared first on CryptoSlate.
