After looking at this chart, I feel quite heavy-hearted, so I want to share it in a way that is easier to understand for everyone. Not to scare, but to understand what is really happening beneath the price.
The number of $BTC that are in a profitable state has dropped from about 19.8 million BTC to 11.2 million BTC. Simply put for easier visualization: many people who were once in profit are now pulled into losses, and many of them have sold at a loss.
This is no longer a type of 'shaking for fun'. This is the stage where high-price buyers can no longer hold on, selling not because of any specific bad news, but because they are exhausted. Exhausted from waiting endlessly, exhausted because each rise is followed by a drop, exhausted as confidence is gradually eroded.
I have been through several stages like this, and there is one very similar point: it is not noisy. It's not a panic crash, but a gradual sell-off in silence. People are no longer online screaming, just quietly cutting losses and leaving.
Looking back at the past, times when the number of profitable Bitcoins sharply decreased like this all fell into very uncomfortable phases: 2018, 2020, 2022. At that time, the market didn't die immediately, but the mentality was drained. When prices go up, no one believes it; when prices go down, not many want to sell hard anymore.
One thing you need to remember is: this phase might not be the bottom right away. Usually, after many people sell in pain, the market will go sideways for quite a long time. There is a lack of buying power when it goes up, and not much selling pressure when it goes down. It's a kind of 'half-alive, half-dead' situation, which can easily discourage you.
But it must be said that this is a necessary condition to create a bottom. To have a new bottom, enough people must give up. No one likes this, but every cycle is the same.
I don't look at this data to shout about buying or say the market is about to soar. I look to understand that: the market is in the final cleansing phase, where weak hands leave the game, and those left are either willing to go very long or have protected their capital.
If you are feeling the market is exhausted, depressed, and lacking the emotions of before, then actually you are not alone. The cycle bottom is often built in disappointment, not in panic.
The most important thing right now is not to guess the bottom correctly but to keep yourself around when everything passes.