Bitcoin’s Rebound Faces Uncertainty – Key Metric Reflects Bearish Trends Similar to Previous Market Downturns

As of April 18, 2025, Bitcoin’s recent price recovery is under scrutiny as critical on-chain and technical indicators mirror patterns observed during historical bear markets. Analysts highlight deteriorating network activity, declining whale accumulation, and weakening exchange outflow metrics—factors that previously signaled prolonged downturns. The NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss) metric, a reliable sentiment gauge, has entered the ’fear’ territory, reminiscent of Q3 2022 conditions. While some institutional buying persists in derivatives markets, the convergence of these metrics suggests the current rally may lack sustainable momentum. Market participants are closely monitoring the $58,000 support level, a breach of which could confirm bearish continuation patterns.

Source: CryptoQuant

The indicator tracks key network adoption elements, including active addresses, block space demand, and transaction count per block.

Per the chart, historically, such slowed adoption capped BTC upside in the near term. 

BTC — Is accumulation on?

Even recent whale and miner movements leaned towards the above weak sentiment. Per another separate CryptoQuant update, whales offloaded 30K BTC last week. That’s nearly a $2.5 billion dump, assuming an average of $82K per BTC. 

Additionally, miners offloaded half of the amount dumped by whales (15K BTC) as their profit margin reduced to 33%, according to CryptoQuant.

These sustained downward pressures dragged BTC accumulation to its lowest levels since February. 

Source: CryptoQuant

Even so, BTC has stayed above $80K for over a week. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, the BTC price resilience was due to strong U.S. spot BTC ETFs and Michael Saylor’s massive bids. 

For his part, Glasnode stated that some whales were already bidding at current levels despite the weakness, citing the Accumulation Trend Score metric. 

“Bitcoin’s Accumulation Trend Score is currently at 0.34 – the highest it’s been year-to-date. This suggests that, on aggregate, wallets are beginning to re-enter accumulation mode, with larger cohorts stepping in modestly despite recent price weakness.”

Source: Glassnode

Simply put, some large players didn’t view the current values as selling levels, but entry levels to add into positions. 

However, the Coinbase Premium Index showed that demand from U.S. retail was at neutral levels and could go in either direction.

A sustained move higher by the Coinbase Premium Index could reinforce increased demand for BTC recovery to extend. On the contrary, a dip lower would drag BTC prices again. 

Source: CryptoQuant