Bitcoin’s Slowest Monthly Growth Since July: Whale Movements Clash With ETF Surge

Bitcoin's hitting the brakes—hard. June 2025 marks its weakest monthly growth since last July, and the usual suspects are playing tug-of-war with its momentum.

Whales vs. ETFs: The trillion-dollar showdown

While ETF inflows keep pouring jet fuel on Bitcoin's fire, crypto's billionaire whales are quietly dumping bags. Classic finance irony—institutional money finally arrives just as the OGs start taking profits. The market's stuck in a liquidity limbo: enough demand to prevent a crash, not enough to punch through resistance.

Technical outlook: consolidation or correction?

Price action's forming a textbook symmetrical triangle—the kind that either breaks out spectacularly or traps greedy leverage traders on both sides. With volatility compressed to July 2024 levels, the next big move could define Q3.

Remember kids: in crypto, 'institutional adoption' often means 'smart money sells to dumb money at premium prices.' The more things change...

Whale selling

However, on-chain data sourced from Glassnode, particularly one key metric called the Accumulation Trend Score, which breaks down the behavior of different wallet cohorts, doesn't paint a rosy picture.

The metric measures the relative strength of accumulation for each cohort based on the size of entities and the amount of BTC acquired over the last 15 days. A value closer to 1 suggests that participants in that cohort are accumulating coins, whereas a value closer to 0 signals distribution. Entities such as exchanges and miners are excluded from this calculation.

Currently, holders with balances between 10 and 10,000 BTC are in accumulation mode, though their behavior fluctuates between buying and selling, indicating they are more opportunistic traders rather than consistent buyers or sellers. Conversely, whales holding 10,000 BTC or more are leaning slightly toward distributing their holdings, while smaller holders are also net sellers.

Consolidation phase

Between January and April 2025, all cohorts were predominantly selling, but accumulation resumed once Bitcoin bottomed in April near the $76,000 level. Now, the asset appears to have entered another consolidation phase.

In its latest “Week On-Chain” report, Glassnode suggests that profit-taking activity is beginning to slow. Realized profits have reached $650 billion in this cycle compared to $550 billion during the previous cycle. Glassnode attributes this trend to a market cooldown, further emphasizing the ongoing consolidation period.