Bitcoin Liquidity Crunch: Smart Money Pivots to New Frontiers
The king of crypto is looking parched—trading volumes withering like a meme coin in a bear market. But while retail stares at BTC's flatlining charts, institutional whales are already swimming toward fresher opportunities.
Where's the action now? Follow the liquidity.
DeFi 3.0 protocols are vacuuming up capital with 20% APY anchors—no 'store of value' platitudes needed. NFTfi markets quietly doubled their loan books last quarter while Bitcoin maximalists debated halving math. And don't look now, but that obscure layer-2 token you mocked just flipped three blue chips in developer activity.
The playbook's clear: Dry powder migrates to where yields flow fastest. Always has, always will—even your hedge fund neighbor's 'HODL' bumper sticker won't change that.
Retail out, whales in
According to Santiment data, Bitcoin’s elite and mortal wallets are moving in two different directions as the biggest crypto hovered around the $104k-$105 zone. It highlighted that the market added 231 wallets holding more than 10 BTC in the last days (approx. 0.15% surge).
On the other hand, wallets holding 0.001 to 10 Bitcoins saw a drop of around 37,465 wallets over the 10 days. Data mentioned that when large wallets accumulate and retail investors loses confidence, it leads to a historically known combination for bullish momentum to return to the crypto markets.
CryptoQuant’s data reported that short-term holders now have 4.5 million BTC. It has been down by 0.8 million since 27 May. It added that demand momentum has dropped to 2 million BTC, which is said to be the worst on record. This suggests that new money is drying up in Bitcoin.
New money is drying up in Bitcoin.
Short-term holders now hold 4.5M BTC, down 0.8M since 27 May.
Demand momentum sinks to –2M BTC, the worst on record. pic.twitter.com/ollWBXHdll
— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) June 20, 2025
Spot ETF demand is still rising, but lagging far behind trend lines. Despite hitting straight 9 days of inflows, the influx has dropped by almost 60% since April. US Spot BTC ETFs have recorded an inflow of $1.02 billion last week and $1.39 billion before the prior week.
Big transfers dominate Bitcoin
Glassnode data hints that beneath Bitcoin’s strong holding over $100k, something surprising is happening as its on-chain activity is unusually quiet. It mentioned that throughout 2023 and 2024, daily Bitcoin transactions surged while peaking at 734k per day. Meanwhile, since the start of 2025, that number has fallen sharply, now ranging between just 320k and 500k transactions per day.
It turns out non-monetary transactions like inscriptions, ordinals, and other blockchain-based data activity have collapsed since January. These were a major driver of last year’s transaction boom. It added that even though fewer transactions are happening, the bitcoin network is still settling massive amounts of value, averaging $7.5 billion per day. However, it peaked at $16 billion when BTC hit its older ATH last November.
The average value per transaction now sits around $36,200. It is a clear signal that high-value players are continuing to use the network. On-chain data further shows that large transactions over $100K have grown to dominate the network. These big-ticket transfers accounted for 66% of all Bitcoin volume in late 2022, but now they make up about 89% of it.
Bitcoin price saw a sudden spike over the last 24 hours as it surged to regain the $106k level from the $104k zone. BTC is trading at an average price of $106,029 at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume is still down by 18% to stand at $37.4 billion.
The cumulative crypto market cap posted a marginal jump over the last day to stand at $3.29 trillion with a trading volume of $86.5 billion. The fear and greed index flashes neutral signals with BTC dominance hitting 64.2 %.
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