BTC fell from 87K back to 84K, and I’m actually paying more attention to an off-consensus data point:
Leverage is falling faster than price.
In the past few days, BTC has gone through:
Ongoing ETF inflows →
BTC broke above 87K →
then a pullback to around 84K.
But during the pullback, not all capital is retreating.
On September 23, the U.S. BTC spot ETF still saw net inflows of about $347M, while the ETH ETF was about $105M.
The on-chain ETF holdings change statistics for September 24 also continue to show net increases in BTC and ETH.
At the same time, Binance BTC Open Interest dropped from about $5.4B to $4.9B, down roughly 9.3%. Funding has also moved to near-neutral.
Putting these three signals together, I think it’s more valuable than just looking at “BTC is down 3%”:
Price ↓
Leverage ↓↓
ETF demand still there
So what does this mean?
At least for now, this pullback looks more like:
deleveraging, not a broad withdrawal of funds.
Both types of declines can be called “down,” but the quality is completely different.
If it’s:
Price down + ETF outflows + OI stays elevated
I’d be more cautious.
But if it’s:
Price down + ETF continues inflows + OI clearly declines + Funding cools off
then it’s actually cleaning up the leverage that built up during the prior rally.
So right now, I won’t change my market view from “slightly bullish” to “turning bearish” just because BTC moved from 87K to 84K.
What really needs to be verified next is:
After leverage is removed, can spot and ETF capital still hold the price?
If they can,
then this pullback might not mean the trend is over,
but rather a cooling-off within the uptrend structure.
This is also something I’ve been focusing on more lately:
Don’t just judge whether prices go up or down.
You should judge who is selling, who is still buying, and what risks are being cleared.
$BTC $ETH #crypto #DeFi
Leverage is falling faster than price.
In the past few days, BTC has gone through:
Ongoing ETF inflows →
BTC broke above 87K →
then a pullback to around 84K.
But during the pullback, not all capital is retreating.
On September 23, the U.S. BTC spot ETF still saw net inflows of about $347M, while the ETH ETF was about $105M.
The on-chain ETF holdings change statistics for September 24 also continue to show net increases in BTC and ETH.
At the same time, Binance BTC Open Interest dropped from about $5.4B to $4.9B, down roughly 9.3%. Funding has also moved to near-neutral.
Putting these three signals together, I think it’s more valuable than just looking at “BTC is down 3%”:
Price ↓
Leverage ↓↓
ETF demand still there
So what does this mean?
At least for now, this pullback looks more like:
deleveraging, not a broad withdrawal of funds.
Both types of declines can be called “down,” but the quality is completely different.
If it’s:
Price down + ETF outflows + OI stays elevated
I’d be more cautious.
But if it’s:
Price down + ETF continues inflows + OI clearly declines + Funding cools off
then it’s actually cleaning up the leverage that built up during the prior rally.
So right now, I won’t change my market view from “slightly bullish” to “turning bearish” just because BTC moved from 87K to 84K.
What really needs to be verified next is:
After leverage is removed, can spot and ETF capital still hold the price?
If they can,
then this pullback might not mean the trend is over,
but rather a cooling-off within the uptrend structure.
This is also something I’ve been focusing on more lately:
Don’t just judge whether prices go up or down.
You should judge who is selling, who is still buying, and what risks are being cleared.
$BTC $ETH #crypto #DeFi
