Bitcoin (BTC) Holds Above $80,000 Three Weeks After October Drop, Glassnode Sees Sellers Fade

Glassnode Weighs the October Standoff

Early on Tuesday, roughly three weeks after the sell-off that opened October, the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode published its latest weekly assessment of the Bitcoin (BTC) market and put the current phase into words: the selling pressure behind the drop has largely faded, while buyers have yet to stage a strong return. The firm's review, timed at 06:50 UTC on our feed, recorded that Bitcoin has managed to hold above the $80,000 level since the early-October decline, a floor it has not given up in the weeks since. The Bitcoin price traded near $82,000 when the report landed and has since eased to $81,742, down 1.4% across the past 24 hours, according to our live monitoring. On the week, BTC shed about 2%, a modest bleed rather than a renewed rout, and the hours since publication have brought little movement, with the coin changing hands almost exactly where it stood when the assessment went out. Glassnode's central observation was that spot-market selling has grown lighter, yet the buying momentum needed to restart a strong uptrend has not appeared. That gap, in the firm's reading, is the difference between a pause and a base: lighter selling removes downward pressure, but only fresh bids turn it into an advance. In the firm's framing, the market sits between two forces: the supply overhang that dominated the first days of the month has receded, and the demand that would absorb what remains has not come back. Glassnode treated the quieter tape as progress but stopped short of calling it a recovery, a distinction that matters because the same assessment names exactly which channels would have to reopen for one to form. In the broader Bitcoin market, the report landed during the coin's third week above the $80,000 line, a stretch the firm read as stabilization without confirmation.

Underneath the headline, the report walked through the market channel by channel and found the same gap in each of them. Spot buyers have not come back in force, and Bitcoin (BTC) ETF investors have yet to return strongly either, with ETF trading volumes running below their usual levels and leaving demand thinner than the price level alone suggests. The futures market tells a matching story. Glassnode found sellers still carrying the heavier weight on perpetual contracts, although that pressure has lightened against the previous period, and the funding rates that leveraged longs pay have started rising again, a sign longs are rebuilding even while sellers remain in the majority. Options traders keep paying for protection against further declines, and with implied volatility now running above realized volatility, the market is pricing more uncertainty ahead than recent swings have actually delivered. The on-chain record adds the distribution side of the picture. Capital continues rotating toward newer investors, the ratio of short-term to long-term holders remains elevated, and the share of supply held in profit keeps tracking at historically high ranges. Two cooling signals stand out against that backdrop: realized profit, the on-chain measure of coins sold at a gain, has declined, which points to slower profit-taking than in the prior period, and the long-term holders who tend to HODL through drawdowns continue to reduce their holdings, though the pace of that reduction has slowed. Glassnode closed the assessment where it started: October's selling pressure is mostly gone, but a lasting recovery will not take shape until spot and ETF demand strengthen again. That demand channel can swing quickly, as BlackRock's IBIT showed with its recent $665.2 million flow reversal, and our earlier note on limited long-term holder selling frames the supply side of the same equation. Beyond ETFs, corporate Bitcoin buying is the next demand question to watch.

Two Levels That Frame the Range

The structure our own composite scoring shows lines up with that wait-and-see read. Spot at $81,742 sits just above the nearest support at $81,356, scored 90 out of 100, while the strongest ceiling begins at $84,404, scored 89 out of 100, leaving Bitcoin (BTC) boxed between two high-conviction levels. Positioning is calm rather than stressed: perpetual funding stands at 0.0059% and open interest at $15.9 billion. What would change the read is a close through $84,404 on renewed spot volume, which would confirm buyers are back, or fresh selling into the $81,356 shelf. BTC also remains well short of its all-time-high, a distance lighter selling alone will not close; our Bitcoin technical analysis page tracks the same bands. The condition Glassnode described, sellers receding while fresh demand stays away, has now been in place since the first week of October.