Bitcoin metrics signal a breakout, but a massive “underwater” supply wall is secretly pinning prices below $93,000

Bitcoin (BTC) walks to shut 2025 with greater than $112 billion locked in US spot ETFs, trade reserves at a report low of two.751 million BTC, and perpetual futures open curiosity of almost $30 billion.

Every single a type of information factors would have sounded constructive in 2022. In late 2025, they map to the identical final result: worth chopping between $81,000 and $93,000 whereas narratives keep bullish and volatility stays suppressed.

The hole between what the numbers say and the way the market trades defines structural stagnation. In this regime, liquidity exists but does not stream, the place capital is giant but fragmented, and the place the plumbing cannot translate headline demand into directional conviction.

The inform got here on Dec. 17, when Bitcoin liquidated $120 million of shorts and $200 million of longs inside hours, not as a result of leverage exploded but as a result of order books could not take up the round-trip with out whipsawing.

Spot depth on tier-one centralized exchanges appears acceptable on paper. CoinGecko’s June 2025 report pegs the median BTC order-book depth at $20 million to $25 million on either side, inside ±$100 of the mid-price throughout eight main venues.

Binance alone provides roughly $8 million on bid and ask, accounting for 32% of the entire. Bitget holds $4.6 million, OKX $3.7 million. Zoom in to a ±$10 band and solely Binance clears $1 million on either side.

Most of the opposite exchanges sit between $100,000 and $500,000, with Kraken and Coinbase nearer to $100,000. That’s institutional-grade depth if traders are crossing a few hundred cash.

Yet, it is tissue paper if a medium-sized fund decides to rebalance or a macro occasion forces simultaneous unwinding throughout venues.

Kaiko’s February 2025 liquidity ranking confirms the asymmetry: market depth has clawed again to pre-FTX ranges for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, but greater than half of the highest 50 tokens by market cap nonetheless fail to generate $200 million in common each day quantity.

Liquidity past the majors decays quick, and Kaiko flags that when buying and selling exercise runs scorching relative to accessible depth, worth affect jumps non-linearly. The structure has recovered; the capability hasn’t scaled.

Blood-flow drawback

Low trade reserves cleanly mapped to bullish supply dynamics: fewer cash on venues meant much less stock accessible to promote.

That logic breaks when cash cease transferring between exchanges. CryptoQuant’s Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse (IFP) has weakened all through 2025, indicating that arbitrageurs and market makers are much less lively in transferring Bitcoin throughout venues to take advantage of mispricings.

Lower IFP thins out the mixture order e book and makes prices more sensitive to individual orders, even small ones. When record-low reserves with weak inter-exchange circulation are mixed, shortage expresses as fragility reasonably than mechanical energy.

Binance complicates the image additional. While most main exchanges report internet BTC outflows, Binance has recorded internet inflows, concentrating tradable stock on the one venue the place worth discovery occurs.

That centralization blunts the “low reserves equals bullish” framing, as a result of sellable supply is pooling precisely the place liquidity issues most.

If depth is shallow all over the place else and focused on one platform, any giant stream, whether or not ETF redemption, macro-driven promoting, or derivatives unwind, hits the identical choke level.

Derivatives reset with out conviction

Perpetual futures open curiosity dropped from cycle highs close to $50 billion to roughly $28 billion by mid-December, per Glassnode’s recent report. That’s a near-50% drawdown out there’s capacity to soak up directional bets.

Funding charges hovered close to the 0.01% baseline throughout the current selloff, reasonably than spiking both approach, and Binance’s late-October funding word exhibits BTC and main alt perps sitting near impartial with minimal deviation.

The market is not paying as much as be lengthy or brief, as positioning has been de-risked, not re-levered.

Options positioning layers in a second constraint. The similar Glassnode report pointed to Bitcoin operating into a “hidden supply wall” between $93,000 and $120,000, the place the short-term holder value foundation sits round $101,500 and roughly 6.7 million BTC, 23.7% of circulating supply, trades underwater.

About 360,000 BTC of current promoting got here from holders realizing losses. That loss-bearing supply migrates into the long-term holder cohort, which traditionally precedes both capitulation or prolonged range-bound chop.

Dec. 26 marks the yr’s largest choices expiry, with heavy gamma positioning pinning the spot worth in an $81,000-$93,000 vary till these contracts roll off. Derivatives aren’t driving volatility, but reasonably suppressing it.

ETF flows as noise, not signal

US spot Bitcoin ETFs maintain roughly 1.3 million BTC, about 6.5% of the market cap, and cumulative internet inflows sit at $57.5 billion as of Dec. 18, per Farside Investors information.

That makes the ETF channel structurally vital, but not directionally dependable. December’s stream sample was a whipsaw: Dec. 15 noticed $357.6 million in internet outflows, Dec. 16 one other $277.2 million, after which Dec. 17 reversed with $457.3 million in internet inflows, led by Fidelity’s FBTC and BlackRock’s IBIT.

On Dec. 15, Bitcoin held close to $87,000 at the same time as ETFs bled greater than $350 million in a single day, stressing that ETF flows are actually giant sufficient to maneuver intraday sentiment but not persistently additive to cost.

The car is buying and selling macro expectations and charge coverage, not delivering a regular “up solely” impulse.

What stagnation appears like in Q1 2026

Structural stagnation is not a bearish name, but simply a liquidity regime.

Spot books on prime centralized exchanges have recovered to pre-FTX ranges for Bitcoin. Still, close-to-mid liquidity stays within the low single-digit tens of millions per aspect on most venues and is overwhelmingly focused on Binance.

On-exchange reserves sit at report lows, but inter-exchange flows have collapsed, so skinny books translate to jumpier slippage and bigger worth affect for a similar notional.

Perpetual open curiosity reset, funding stays impartial, and choices plus overhead spot supply between $93,000 and $120,000 mechanically pin Bitcoin into a vary till new capital or a macro catalyst forces repositioning.

ETF flows swing by lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} daily, but the signal flips on charge information, employment prints, and Fed steering reasonably than crypto-native fundamentals.

Unless considered one of three issues adjustments, Bitcoin can have bullish headlines, new merchandise, and increasing infrastructure whereas worth motion stays uneven and range-bound via the primary half of 2026.

Liquidity exists, but it is caught. The infrastructure is institutional-grade, but it isn’t scale-ready. The capital is giant, but it is fragmented throughout venues, wrappers, and jurisdictions.

That’s what structural stagnation means: not damaged, not bearish, simply boxed in by its personal plumbing till one thing forces the following leg.

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