Retail Behavior Offers a Historical Comparison
An earlier contraction in smaller-holder groups preceded bitcoin’s recovery above $85K, providing a comparison for Santiment’s latest interpretation. Its September assessment identified 69,494 addresses leaving two balance groups during July and August. Those groups held between 0.1 and 1 $BTC and between 1 and 10 $BTC, respectively. Departures could reflect selling, consolidation, or movements outside those ranges.
Address balances change when coins move, so the number of funded addresses differs from the number of individual investors. Transaction inputs and outputs reassign coins, with change often returning to another address controlled by the sender. One investor can control multiple addresses, and an emptied address can receive funds again.
By early October, the firm’s analysis described an obstacle: small holders were continuing to accumulate despite falling prices. Santiment’s Oct. 9 assessment found wallets holding 10 to 10K $BTC had added more than 85K $BTC over roughly three weeks. Meanwhile, wallets holding less than 0.01 $BTC had continued increasing, which the firm viewed as an impediment to a stronger recovery.
$80,000 Support and $82,500 Recovery Test
Recent price weakness adds another challenge to the recovery scenario, with bitcoin losing a level that had supported earlier trading. By Oct. 24, $BTC had fallen below its 50-day moving average, a measure of average daily closing prices over that period. The breach followed roughly two months in which the indicator had acted as support.
Separately, demand and investor profitability showed weaknesses in an Oct. 21 assessment by Cryptoquant contributor Darkfost. The analyst highlighted a Bull Score Index decline from 80 to 60. The index combines 10 measures, including demand, network activity, liquidity, and profitability, to evaluate the market environment.
Santiment stated:
“$80K is the immediate battleground. If wallets keep declining while $BTC holds $80K and reclaims roughly $82.5K, the contrarian bottom signal becomes much stronger. A sustained break below the recent $79K area would delay that setup and suggest capitulation still has further to run.”
