Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Push $3.6 Billion in BTC to Exchanges at a Loss

Bitcoin short-term holders moved roughly 47,300 BTC to cryptocurrency exchanges below their acquisition price over 24 hours, worth about $3.6 billion combined with profitable deposits, according to on-chain data from CryptoQuant. Profitable transfers in the same window came to just 1,100 BTC.

The flow is one-sided to a degree analysts flag as unusual. CryptoQuant contributor Amr Taha identified two large waves of underwater deposits over the past week: 50,790 BTC on November 3 and 46,060 BTC on November 10.

"On November 10, profitable transfers stood near 1,700 BTC, meaning approximately 27 BTC arrived at a loss for every 1 BTC transferred at a profit," Taha wrote in a November 11 analysis.

What do the numbers actually measure?

CryptoQuant's short-term holder profit-and-loss chart tracks transfers, not completed sales. Depositing Bitcoin to an exchange often precedes selling, but coins also arrive for trading into other tokens, collateral, or platform services. The data cannot confirm how much of the transferred Bitcoin was ultimately sold.

The chart isolates short-term holders, a cohort CryptoQuant defines as investors holding Bitcoin for fewer than 155 days. These buyers carry the most exposure to a sudden price reversal, especially once their positions sit underwater. A buyer who paid $80,000 holds a paper loss near 7.5% with Bitcoin trading around $74,000; selling at that level locks the loss in.

Bitcoin has slid from late-September highs above $85,000 into the $73,000-to-$74,000 range. The latest spike in loss-making transfers sits near the deepest readings visible since July, and similar spikes have recurred across several months as price swung in both directions.

Which coin cohorts are moving on Binance?

A separate CryptoQuant breakdown of deposits to Binance, grouped by time since each coin last moved on-chain, shows fresh activity accelerating. Coins last moved one day to one week earlier accounted for 3,290 BTC arriving on November 1, then a much larger 8,114 BTC on November 3.

On November 9, Binance received 1,925 BTC from coins last moved one to three months earlier, per Taha's analysis. Those figures show which age bands are active, but they don't establish when the owners originally bought their Bitcoin.

The Binance chart covers a single exchange and groups coins by last on-chain movement, while the profit-and-loss charts track short-term holders sending coins to exchanges market-wide.

Is longer-term supply underwater too?

Yes, and by a larger margin. Glassnode identified about 4 million BTC held by longer-term investors that was acquired between $85,000 and $118,000. That creates a second pocket of supply sitting at a loss above current prices — inventory that could cap rallies if those holders opt to exit near break-even.

The near-term question is whether the loss-making deposit wave exhausts itself as it did after the November 3 spike, or builds into sustained distribution. With short-term holders capitulating at a 27-to-1 ratio and a multi-million-coin overhang above the market, the next sessions will test whether $73,000 holds as the level where underwater supply finally clears.