Driven by regulatory breakthroughs, the entry of structural funds and the recovery of market confidence, Bitcoin is once again approaching its historical high. As the GENIUS Stablecoin Act advances to the final vote in the Senate, a channel for hundreds of billions of dollars of funds to flow into the crypto market is about to be opened, and the US SEC has also simultaneously launched a new round of crypto rule-making work, sending an unprecedented policy-friendly signal.
At the same time, on-chain data shows that Bitcoins illiquid supply has hit a new high, and chips are steadily migrating from short-term speculators to long-term holders. Spot ETFs continue to attract funds, and funding rates are running at a low level, indicating that this round of rise is not overheated, but driven by institutional buying and structural tightening.
Bitcoin is moving away from the early speculative logic and entering a new cycle that is more mature, stable, and capital-led. While market sentiment remains restrained and volatility has not yet expanded, traders and institutions have different judgments on new highs. BlockBeats has compiled them for readers reference.
Trader Analysis
Positions haven’t broken new highs, but prices have broken first = healthy rise?
BTCs current network-wide holdings are finally approaching their historical highs!
There is still room for improvement of $2.9 billion from the previous high of $69.568 billion in holdings;
The current price is only $2,000 away from breaking the new high, so even if it is completely driven by futures, it may not necessarily lead to an increase in positions of $2.9 billion. In other words, it is difficult to form a divergence between positions and prices here;
If the price pulls back, and positions begin to gradually increase or even exceed historical highs after the pullback, then a position divergence may form. This type of large structural bull top divergence appeared at the end of 2021.
So the current logic is very simple. The price broke the new high before the position broke the new high, which means that the market still does not have excessive FOMO and is very healthy!
Before the price breaks the new high, the position breaks the new high, which means that the speculative sentiment is too strong and a market to kill the position will easily come.
Rising instead of falling: Active buying to resolve selling pressure
According to Coinkarma indicators, Bitcoin continues to rise instead of fall
Yesterday, during the Tencent conference live broadcast, I thought that there would be a wave of upward breakthroughs in late May to test the previous high. On the one hand, there is the expectation of a pull-up before the Bitcoin conference, and on the other hand, from the perspective of the CoinKarma indicator, Bitcoins LIQ is constantly improving. LIQ measures the difference between the upper and lower order books. The appearance of red means that the upper spot sell orders are far more than the lower spot buy orders (pending orders). Generally speaking, this is a dangerous signal.
After the first breakthrough of 100,000 (May 9-14), Bitcoin and Overall (i.e. the “market”) both showed red, which is usually referred to as a “danger signal”. However, we have also given the expectation of the main upward wave, refer to BTCUSDLONGS and ETHBTCLONGS. Therefore, we continue to observe and can see that there are still a few “sporadic reds” later, but the frequency is getting lower and lower, but Bitcoin is still at a high level above 102,000.
The last time it turned red was in the 106000 range. As you can see, the price has obviously increased, but the red prompts of LIQ have decreased significantly. What is the reason? This is what I call the rising instead of falling market, and it is also the key evidence of the bullish strength.
Generally speaking, LIQ red needs to be resolved through a decline. When there are too many sell orders at a certain position (such as 105,000), Bitcoin moves in the direction of less resistance (downward). When Bitcoin falls back to 99,000, the sell orders above become fewer and the buy orders below become more, and the long and short sides are rebalanced, so Bitcoin will stop falling and the LIQ indicator will return to normal.
The understanding of rising instead of falling is that active buying has always existed, continuously hitting the sell order wall, making the pending orders at the key position of 105000 less and less until they are completely absorbed. Therefore, when the price continues to move upward, LIQ has improved.
After observing the objective reality that LIQ turned red only at 106,000 the day before yesterday and that the correction to 105,000 significantly improved, I was very confident in going long. This also helped me hold a series of long orders such as PEPE MOODENG in my hands and make a profit.
Based on the principles of seasonality and event-driven, I think there will be a possibility of continued upward movement at least until the 26th. After the 26th, we need to be cautious. (Regardless of whether it is the main upward trend, be realistic)
In addition, the copycat still needs to wait until Bitcoin stabilizes at 110,000 or above before there is hope for a substantial rebound. Before that, it can only go long in the short term.
Limited contract outflow, main force has not left, cautious bullish
Lets talk about the overall market situation. The SP 500 fell 1% when the U.S. stock market opened just now, but the bitcoin market did not follow the decline.
At present, the accumulation data of the Bitcoin contract is between 6.6 B and 7 B at the highest point. The current maximum outflow is 1.7 B, which is not a large proportion. In addition, there is a net inflow of 5.65 B. I tend to think that the main force has not left yet. At this time, I still tend to be bullish.
Many friends said that the main force of BTC drew many gates yesterday. In fact, there is only one real gate, which is the one indicated by my arrow. If you want to see the large-scale gates, you cannot look at the 15 min and 1 h ones. You must at least look at the 4 h or 1 D ones.
So before the main force wants to break through, there will be a false breakout to make long positions stop losses and short positions liquidate, and then the real intention will come out, which is to rise. In addition, we have always said that the main forces bottom chips have not been released, and the probability of an increase is still high.
Therefore, the general trend is upward, so I will not go short and will always look for opportunities to go long on high-quality coins.
The key point is stable, and we still cannot be bearish before the historical high point
It seems that my judgment last night was still hasty. Bitcoin started to move in sync with the U.S. stock market at first, and then started its own independent trend at 23:00. The current situation has overturned my two views yesterday:
1. Short-term top signal, hourly and daily levels have been overturned
2. The Stablecoin Act is still driving the market, but the market has not fully anticipated and priced it.
Conclusion:
1. The price broke through and stabilized at 106,450, which is the second highest point in 25 years. The price breakthrough means that the chips accumulated here form an effective turnover, and the price will be further pushed upward, so it is impossible to be bearish in the short term.
2. Stablecoin legislation will not be considered a positive implementation until Trump finally signs it and it becomes law. Once Trump signs the bill into law, we must pay attention to its positive implementation.
3. The next key turnover resistance is the historical high. This is a key position of psychological expectation and also a key turnover area.
Of course, my friends must have asked me if my short position is still there. The answer is yes. I am waiting for the historical high point at the first position to cover my position.
Chip concentration pauses: direction critical, volatility is coming
From May 7 to May 14, BTCs chip concentration dropped from a high of 15.5% to 8.2% in just 7 days. This shows that as the price rises, it has gradually moved away from the chip concentration area. If the concentration curve continues to decline, it is likely that the price will continue to rise.
However, we found that after May 14, the concentration curve suddenly stopped falling at around 8.2%, and it seemed to be turning upward again. The concentration of 8.2% is neither high nor low.
If the price falls and returns to the concentration zone, the concentration curve will rise rapidly again, brewing greater volatility. Similar to the 2025.1.23 marked in the figure, the price correction caused the concentration to drop from a high level, and then turned around and went up again, and the price volatility was amplified.
Another possibility is that if the price continues to rise, the concentration curve will only pause for a while before continuing downward, similar to the situation marked on November 3, 2024 in the figure.
In short, the current concentration curve did not go all the way down but paused halfway, which brought uncertainty to the market direction. Through this indicator, it is difficult for us to guess whether to be bullish or bearish. It only tells us that the market may choose a direction again.
However, when concentration rises to a certain level, it would be a good choice to consider going long on volatility.
Institutional Observation
CryptoQuant: No signs of overheating in the market
Whenever there is a strong rise in the price of a coin, causing a large number of tokens that were originally in a loss to quickly turn profitable, the 30-day simple moving average (SMA) of the unspent transaction output (UTXO) profit and loss ratio will rise above 200. The higher this indicator soars, the more likely the market is to be close to the overheating or selling pressure release stage.
Currently, the indicator is at 99, so there are no signs of overheating in the market. If this moving average continues to break through 200, it will be a clear signal that market sentiment has entered a new round of frenzy. In other words, the market may still continue to set new highs, but the easy fuel that drives the profit and loss ratio up has basically been exhausted, and stronger price momentum or violent fluctuations will be needed to push the indicator higher again.
As I said yesterday, the third compression period of this cycle is the key elasticity that pushed the index above 200 and into the overheating stage.
Matrixport: Spot buying drives long-term funds to gradually replace short-term speculation
Bitcoin market reappears historical trend: the price is approaching a new high, and the open interest has also risen to a historical high of US$34 billion. However, the funding rate is still close to zero, indicating that this round of trend is driven by spot buying, not leveraged contracts.
The low funding rate means that the market speculative bubble is limited and the risk of a sharp pullback caused by leverage is low. As a result, volatility remains low in this cycle and is unlikely to fluctuate sharply in the short term.
The structure of the Bitcoin market is evolving, with long-term funds gradually replacing short-term speculation and becoming the dominant driving force.
10x Research: Long-term holders’ holdings are still rising, and the cycle is not over yet
On-chain data analysis shows that in 2025, Bitcoins OG wallets - that is, wallets of early investors, miners, and established exchanges - have been distributing Bitcoin continuously. This is not a panic sell-off, but a planned and rhythmic rotation of assets. Bitcoin is steadily flowing to high-net-worth individuals, hedge funds, and corporate treasuries like MicroStrategy. At the same time, the amount of coins on trading platforms remains low, and market volatility is also being suppressed. This round is not the rapid rise driven by retail impulse in 2017 or 2021.
This move is slow, strategic, and institutionally driven. As long as big players can continue to absorb selling pressure, Bitcoin still has room to rise. Bitcoins historical patterns show that the real risk is not when long-term holders start selling, but when they stop selling. Thats when demand begins to weaken, absorption fails, and early investors are forced to become passive holders again. We saw this in March 2024 and again in January 2025. Both times the signals were clear - we turned bearish in time.
Now, long-term holders are still holding more coins, indicating that this cycle is not over yet. We accurately predicted that Bitcoin would break through $84,500, and then rise to $95,000 and $106,000. Our next target is $122,000, which is still based on our analysis models of macro cycles and behavioral capital flows, which have successfully identified major turning points many times.
QCP: New highs will lead to further FOMO
The 30-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield has broken through the 3% mark, breaking through the historical mark. Japans ballooning debt problem has long been a potential concern and is now approaching a critical point. If this wave of bond selling continues and fiscal concerns intensify, the markets reassessment of Japans risks may drive the yen up in the short term. The shock in the Japanese market has begun to spread to global markets. The US 30-year Treasury yield has re-break through 5%, and investors are turning their attention to the USs own debt path.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin attempted to break through the $108,000 mark today, but failed to maintain momentum. The current price trend is closely related to the increase in holdings by Strategy and Metaplanet, which are still the main sources of buying. However, the market is increasingly concerned that they may represent the last wave of marginal buyers. If their purchases slow down, it may trigger other investors to take profits, thus reversing the current upward trend.
Despite continued macro headwinds, including surging bond yields, escalating tariffs, and potential stagflation risks in the United States in the third and fourth quarters of 2024, Bitcoin has shown amazing resilience over the past month. That being said, once prices successfully break through historical highs, it may trigger a new round of FOMO sentiment, pulling sideline funds into the market and further pushing up the price of the currency.
