Bitcoin Slides to $79,675 as Spot ETFs Bleed $635M and 200-Day MA Caps Rally

Bitcoin News

Spot Bitcoin ETF products absorbed their heaviest single-day blow since late January, with investors pulling roughly $635 million from the eleven U.S.-listed funds in a single trading session. The drawdown stretched a five-day outflow streak to about $1.26 billion, trimming cumulative net inflows since the January 2024 debut to $58.5 billion from $59.76 billion a week earlier. The exodus arrived as Bitcoin stalled near the 200-day simple moving average just above $82,000, snapping a six-week rally that had carried prices from $65,000 toward the $80,000 handle. Persistent inflation surprises and a more hawkish read on the incoming Fed chair reshaped flow expectations for the back half of the quarter.

Technical analysts flagged the 200-day moving average at $82,400 as a textbook bear-market resistance, citing the March 2022 episode in which Bitcoin reversed sharply after a similar test. Trader unrealized profit margins climbed to 17.7% on May 5, the loftiest reading since June and a near-mirror of the 2022 setup that preceded a deeper leg lower. On-chain data shows holders cashed out roughly 14,600 BTC worth nearly $1.2 billion on May 4, the largest realized-profit spike since early December. If the rejection holds, the next meaningful support cluster sits around $70,000, the average price at which the entire Bitcoin supply was last transacted.

Macro pressure compounded the technical setup as Bitcoin slipped to $79,200 in Asian hours, down 2.3% on the day and 2.2% on the week. Producer prices jumped 1.4% month-over-month against a 0.5% forecast, the steepest gain in four years, while the prior session's 3.8% CPI print marked the hottest reading in nearly three years. Geopolitics added a second leg of selling after Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump of potential conflict over Taiwan during the first sitting U.S. presidential visit to China in almost a decade. Solana led altcoin declines with a 5.6% slide to $90, while Ether dropped 2.1% to $2,250.

Nakamoto delivered a turbulent Q1 print, reporting a $238.8 million net loss even as revenue surged more than 500% quarter-on-quarter to $2.7 million. The company completed February acquisitions of BTC Inc. and UTXO Management, with treasury and derivatives operations contributing $1.1 million, media adding $800,000, healthcare $500,000 and asset management $200,000. A $107.7 million non-cash charge linked to a pre-acquisition option and a $102.5 million mark-to-market hit on its 5,058 BTC treasury drove the bulk of the red ink. Shares now sit more than 99.2% below their all-time high, and the firm sold 284 BTC on March 31 to cover operating expenses without making fresh purchases.

A viral recovery story spotlighted artificial intelligence as a wallet-rescue tool after a pseudonymous user reported recouping roughly 5 BTC worth about $395,000 from a dormant address. The owner had spent eight weeks brute-forcing his current Blockchain.com wallet through btcrecover and rented GPUs, churning through approximately 3.5 trillion combinations at a total cost near $15. The breakthrough came when Anthropic's chatbot scanned more than a gigabyte of files across two Macs, two external drives, an Apple Notes export, iCloud and Gmail, surfacing a December 2019 backup file that matched a handwritten password. The recovered private keys, dormant since 2015, never required cracking the underlying elliptic-curve cryptography.

The episode reignited debate over the estimated 2.3 million to 4 million BTC considered permanently inaccessible, representing 11% to 19% of the maximum supply locked behind lost seed phrases and corrupted backups. Industry observers noted that AI-assisted file forensics could meaningfully expand the recoverable pool by lowering the technical bar that has historically gated specialized retrieval services. Researchers continue to place a cryptographically relevant quantum computer five to ten years out, meaning the underlying blockchain security model remains intact. The recovery effectively functioned as automated file search rather than a cryptographic attack, a distinction that matters for the broader self-custody and cold wallet conversation.

Bitcoin trades at $79,675 with a 24-hour decline of 1.70% and a $1.59 trillion market cap, pressing into immediate support at $79,221 with deeper bids stacked at $77,955 and $73,990. Resistance sits at $80,281, followed by the heavier $82,848 ceiling that aligns with the disputed 200-day moving average and the $89,065 swing barrier. RSI at 56.46 reflects a still-neutral momentum profile, but the bearish MACD crossover combined with the sideways trend favors the downside until ETF flows stabilize. A reclaim of $82,848 on rising volume would invalidate the rejection thesis; failure to defend $77,955 opens the path toward the $73,990 demand shelf.