The market has recently entered an "awkward" period. Onlookers who are worried about the macro economy are waiting for a deep drop, and believers who entered the market early are not interested in selling, so BTC is slowly grinding up and down. It has been 59 days since it first broke through the 60,000 US dollar mark on February 28.

This situation seems familiar. In March 2023, the Federal Reserve was in a rapid rate hike cycle, constantly draining market liquidity, many US banks collapsed, and various FUDs including Bn and USDT made market sentiment depressed, and the price fluctuated repeatedly in the range of 25,000-30,000 US dollars for 219 days. At that time, 90% believed that BTC would return to below 20,000 US dollars again. This became a "garbage time" for most retail investors.

But there are always some "smart money" that will quietly act during such garbage time. The following figure shows the change in the balance of BTC in the exchange, which allows us to clearly observe in which time periods, a large number of BTC are withdrawn from the exchange. Because of such a large and continuous (30-day average) transfer out of the exchange, there is only one possibility, that is, "smart money" is quietly buying.

The peak period of the transfer data happened to be when the bottom was formed at the end of this bear market (green box on the left). Of course, at that time, none of us could be sure that 15,000-18,000 was the historical bottom. This just proved what someone said, "The market has no bottom, but when more people copy it, it becomes the bottom."

The second withdrawal peak occurred when the price fluctuated between 25,000 and 30,000 for 219 days (marked in the green box in the middle). That is why I said that when most people think that this is a period of time that should be cautiously watched, they do not know that there is "smart money" operating against human nature.

However, the second peak is significantly smaller than the first. Now here comes the point! During the 59 days when BTC was consolidating in the range of 60,000-68,000 USD, the third outflow peak appeared, and this peak was higher than the previous one. If we don’t consider which exchange is too idle to transfer BTC in the wallet every day, it means that there are big funds quietly buying and then withdrawing from the exchange. But since April 12, the outflow trend has gradually weakened, which is not unrelated to the current macro environment. Let’s go back in time and see how the data performed from the middle of the bull market to the peak of the last cycle.

March to December 2020 was the middle of the bull market, and there were also a large number of outflow peaks. December 2020 to April 21 was the first stage of the peak-catch period, and the outflow peak was significantly smaller, accompanied by the appearance of transfer-in (green signal), which made the two sides relatively balanced. The 5.19 black swan event ended the first stage of the bull market, and a large number of chips were transferred to the exchange, so there was a peak of transfer-in. Until the second stage of the bull market at the end of the bull market, there was another peak of transfer-in. With this comparison, I think it is very clear to my friends that the current situation is most likely not the peak-catch stage at the end of the bull market. In order to verify that the above views are not subjective conjectures, we can also see some clues from the UPRD data. The following two pictures show the turnover (movement) of chips on the BTC chain from 2024.4.15 to 2024.4.27.

The ancient chips (green box) in the previous cycle did not change. The 16,200 position decreased by 10,000 chips; the 41,200-43,400 range decreased by 30,000 chips; especially the 25,700-30,900 range decreased by 80,000 chips (the huge volume column at 26,500 did not change, mainly because the chips at 28,000 changed a lot, and it is not yet certain whether it is due to the exchange sorting out the cold wallet).

It can be seen that due to the low market sentiment during this period, the early low-priced chips did loosen to a certain extent. However, this range is still within the normal range, which is different from the situation when the early chip accumulation area was almost wiped out when the bull market peak appeared.

Moreover, 270,000 BTC were added in the 63,300-69,200 range. In other words, 270,000 BTC were moved in this price range. Except for some wallet conversions, most of them were generated by transactions. Where there is selling, there is buying, especially around 64,000 and 66,000 US dollars, there are large funds buying. This is consistent with the third peak of transfers in this price range mentioned above.

If we are ordinary retail investors who buy a few BTC, we probably won’t move them to our wallets. After all, for small retail investors, it may be safer to keep the coins on the exchange, but large investors and whales don’t think so, especially after the FTX crash. Once BTC is moved from the exchange to the wallet, it will be moved on the chain. In addition, there are many OTC transactions abroad that are often used by market makers, mining farms, and whales, which are also on-chain movements and are all recorded in the URPD data. Therefore, the proportion of data interference is not large, and it can be used as an important reference for our derivation of conclusions.

So now, more than 60,000 Bitcoin whales are still buying. Do you think the bull market is over?

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