Bitcoin is still being bought, but much more cautiously: report

Short-term Bitcoin buyers are becoming cautious and accumulation is slowing even as net positions remain positive.

Bitcoin rose above $126,000 in early October and recently plummeted to $60,000 before a modest recovery near $68,000. Despite the brutal oscillation, many entities continue to buy the asset, betting on a long-awaited price appreciation.

But a certain group of BTC holders have slowed this pace.

Demand slowdown

Data shared by Alphractal revealed that the change in the net position of short-term holders over 90 days is declining, despite remaining in positive territory. This means that while short-term holders continue to accumulate Bitcoin, the pace of accumulation has slowed dramatically in recent days.

According to the analytics platform, this slowdown points to a weakening of short-term demand momentum and has historically preceded periods of market consolidation, increased volatility or broader regime transitions.

In this context, Alphractal founder Joao Wedson stated that recent institutional purchases have not translated into greater demand from short-term holders.

“Even with the strategy news accumulating and other institutional entities increasing their positions, short-term holders are not accumulating at the same rate as 90 days ago. Analyzing a few isolated entities is not enough. The correct approach is to evaluate the entire Bitcoin blockchain to understand the true underlying demand.”

Whale holdings differ

CryptoQuant Separate Analysis needles to a contrasting trend among large Bitcoin holders. It found that whale accumulation has increased by more than 200,000 BTC.

Although whale inflows to exchanges have increased recently, which is often associated with short-term selling activity, their overall holdings have continued to grow. To capture a more medium-term perspective, the analysis tracks whale supply using monthly averages rather than short-term flows. After this metric dropped sharply to almost -7% on December 15, whale behavior appears to have changed over the past month, as evidenced by holdings increasing by 3.4%.

You may also be interested in:

During this period, the amount of Bitcoin held by whales increased from around 2.9 million BTC to over 3.1 million BTC. The last time a buildup of this scale occurred was during the April 2025 market correction, when whale buying helped absorb selling pressure and Bitcoin’s advance from $76,000 to $126,000. CryptoQuant explained that the crypto asset is currently consolidating almost 46% below its most recent all-time high. Therefore, it is possible that some whales are taking advantage of this opportunity.