What’s Behind The Recent Bitcoin Drop? Here’s What On-Chain Data Says

Bitcoin on-chain data hints that selling from the miners may have been behind the latest plunge in the asset’s price below the $28,000 mark.

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, miners had been putting on some selling pressure on Bitcoin while the decline had happened. A relevant indicator here is the “miner netflow,” which measures the net amount of Bitcoin entering into or exiting the wallets of all miners.

When this metric has a positive value, it means a net number of coins is being transferred into the wallets of miners right now. Such a trend implies that these chain validators are accumulating currently, which is naturally something that could be bullish for the price.

On the other hand, negative values suggest miners are transferring some BTC out of their holdings at the moment. Usually, miners transfer out their coins whenever they want to sell them. Hence, negative netflow values can have bearish consequences for the asset.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the 30-day simple moving average (SMA) Bitcoin miner netflow over the past week or so:

As displayed in the above graph, the 30-day SMA Bitcoin miner netflow registered a very sharp red spike when the cryptocurrency’s price was in the middle of its decline a few days ago.

BTC was just above $28,000 when this spike came, but the asset rapidly plummeted to the low $27,000 level following it. The timing of these large net outflows taking place from the miners may be a sign that it was this cohort’s selling that at least partially contributed to the coin’s drawdown.

The chart for the 30-day exponential moving average (EMA) Bitcoin miner reserve, a metric that measures the total amount of BTC all miners are holding right now, also shows this spike:

This plummet in the Bitcoin miner reserve from a few days ago naturally makes sense, as the netflow is nothing but a measure of the changes taking place in this metric. From the chart, it’s visible that while the outflows may have been sizeable, they still haven’t significantly affected this cohort’s total holdings, meaning that many miners are still sitting still on their wallets.

Nonetheless, compared to the average during the last 365 days, the current outflows are very large, as the data for the 14-day EMA Miners’ Position Index (MPI) below displays.

It looks like the rate at which Bitcoin miners are selling right now (proportional to the past year) is greater than what even the FTX crash back in November 2022 saw.

All these indicators suggest that this extraordinary selling pressure from these holders could be why BTC plunged to low $27,000 levels a couple of days ago, something that the coin is yet to recover.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $27,300, down 8% in the last week.