Bitcoin started the Asian trading week trading around $65,000, down 4.4%, according to CoinDesk market data.
This follows a sharp rise in the price from the $67,000 range where it traded over the weekend, and on-chain data from Glassnode and CryptoQuant suggest that the worst of the panic may be over, but the broader structure remains under pressure.
Glassnode data shows that recent Bitcoin buyers realized heavy losses earlier this month. On February 6, smoothed seven-day short-term holder profits and losses fell to $1.24 billion per day, meaning new investors collectively locked in losses of more than $1 billion per day.
The Net Realized Gains and Loss 7D-EMA for investors recently plummeted to –$1.24B/day on February 6 before falling back to –$0.48B/day today.
While intensity has cooled, the broader regime still points to pressure on the market, with players in the base-forming stages… https://t.co/rhCsrDuDfJ pic.twitter.com/00zibdP1om— glassnode (@glassnode) February 23, 2026
That number has since increased to about $480 million per day. In other words, the panic selling has slowed but hasn’t stopped completely. Recent buyers have generally remained in the red, a dynamic that typically occurs during a bottoming phase rather than during a strong uptrend.
CryptoQuant’s transaction flow data paints a similar picture of changing market dynamics.
Data from CryptoQuant’s latest weekly report shows that during the decline towards $60,000 in early February, the amount of Bitcoin sent to exchanges surged to approximately 60,000 BTC per day. This number has since dropped to approximately 23,000 BTC on a seven-day smoothed basis, indicating that the immediate wave of selling has cooled.
But salespeople have changed. CryptoQuant’s “exchange whale ratio” has climbed to 0.64, its highest level since 2015. This means that nearly two-thirds of the Bitcoin flowing into exchanges every day comes from the 10 largest daily deposits.
In other words, large holders (often referred to as whales) account for the majority of the exchange’s supply. The average size of each Bitcoin deposit has also increased to mid-2022 levels, reinforcing the idea that larger players, rather than small retail traders, are driving current trading activity.
Altcoins face wider distribution. CryptoQuant data shows that as of 2026, average daily deposits on altcoin exchanges have increased to approximately 49,000, up from approximately 40,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025. Historically, increased deposit activity in alternative tokens has tended to be accompanied by higher volatility and weaker risk appetite.
Liquidity buffers are also thinning. According to data from CryptoQuant, net USDT inflows into exchanges have compressed significantly from a one-year high of $616 million in November to just $27 million, and briefly turned negative at the end of January. Stablecoin inflows typically expand during rallies. Their contraction indicates a decline in marginal purchasing power.
Taken together, Glassnode’s loss realization data and CryptoQuant’s trading indicators depict a market that is pricing in a capitulation event but has yet to reestablish strong demand.
As the week begins, the key question is whether the $65,000 level can serve as a near-term pivot, or whether BTC is still in a longer-term bottoming phase.
