Bitcoin is still being bought, just much more cautiously: report

Short-term Bitcoin buyers are turning cautious and accumulation is slowing, even as net positions remain positive.

Bitcoin climbed above $126,000 in early October and recently crashed to $60,000 before staging a modest recovery around $68,000. Despite the bold twist, many entities are still buying the assets, betting on a long-awaited price increase.

But a certain cohort of BTC holders has slowed this pace.

Demand delay

Data shared by Alpharactal revealed that the short-term holder’s net position change over a 90-day period is declining, despite still being in positive territory. This means that while short-term holders are still accumulating Bitcoin, the pace of accumulation has slowed sharply in recent days.

According to the analytics platform, this slowdown signals a weakening of short-term demand momentum and historically precedes periods of market consolidation, increased volatility or broader regime transitions.

Against this backdrop, Alphractal founder Joao Wedson said the recent institutional purchases have not translated into stronger holder demand in the near term.

“Even as the news of Strategy’s accumulation and other institutional entities are increasing their positions, Short-Term Holders are not accumulating at the same pace as 90 days ago. Analyzing a few isolated entities is not enough. The right approach is to evaluate the entire Bitcoin blockchain to understand the true underlying demand.”

Whale ownership varies

Separate analysis of CryptoQuant points to a contrasting trend among large Bitcoin holders. It turned out that the accumulation of whales has increased by more than 200,000 BTC.

Although whale inflows into the exchanges have increased recently, often associated with short-term selling activity, their total holdings have continued to grow. To capture a more medium-term perspective, the analysis tracks whale supply using monthly averages rather than short-term flows. After this metric fell sharply to almost -7% on December 15, whale behavior appears to have changed over the past month, as evidenced by a 3.4% increase in whale ownership.

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During this period, the amount of Bitcoin held by the whales increased from approximately 2.9 million BTC to over 3.1 million BTC. The last time an accumulation of this magnitude occurred was during the April 2025 market correction, when buying whales helped absorb the selling pressure and Bitcoin’s rise from $76,000 to $126,000. CryptoQuant explained that crypto assets are currently consolidating nearly 46% below the most recent all-time high. Therefore, some whales may abuse this opportunity.