As Bitcoin trades in the low-$60,000s, the ledger shows nearly half of holders are sitting on losses.
Newhedge’s percent supply in profit gauge shows 51.78% of coins are in profit with BTC around $63,275, implying roughly 10.35 million BTC in profit versus 9.64 million BTC in loss.
However, this weekend, analyst DurdenBTC’s supply in profit tracker had flagged an even harsher read: 44.2% of coins were in profit when Bitcoin was still holding $68,000, a 0th-percentile reading.
That number carries a specific kind of weight. It compresses years of market habit into a single percentage and frames the current scenario as a balance-sheet problem.
Durden’s note ties the reading to earlier capitulation baselines: December 2018 at $3,359 with 43% in profit; the COVID crash at $4,959 with 48%; and the FTX washout at $15,778 with 49%.
Then he adds,
“BTC near $68k, more people underwater than when it traded near $3k.”
The intuitive shape of the claim is simple.
A full cycle bought high, and the unwind shows up as overhead supply. Every rally has a seller inside waiting to get back to break-even.
This methodology makes this the worst cycle for Bitcoin investors since before 2016, when this specific tracker began. DurdenBTC’s method follows that of BGeometrics, which has since fallen to 41.2%.
To explain the differences in percentages, we understand the definitions properly to highlight which cohort we’re measuring.
For example, CryptoQuant’s dashboard for percent supply in profit currently reads 51.6%.
That materially different picture points to a split between dormant coins and the coins that actually move through the market’s plumbing.
CryptoQuant’s own framing helps explain how the gap can exist. It describes it as an “active circulating supply” cost basis that excludes long-inactive coins, steering the lens toward investors with fresh receipts and fresh pain.
That is where the story stops being a paradox and starts being a map. The long tail of old coins can sit in profit on paper, while the live float still feels like a room full of buyers trapped above spot.
DurdenBTC’s read comes in lower because, like BGeometrics, he’s effectively grading profitability on the coins that actually changed hands in this cycle, tagging supply to the market price at each coin’s last on-chain move, so the score is dominated by UTXOs minted at 2021–2024 cost bases that now sit above spot.
Dashboards like CryptoQuant, by contrast, sum profitability across the full live UTXO set in a value-weighted way, which lets large, long-dormant outputs with ultra-low cost bases keep a larger share of the supply “in profit” and boost the percentage.
In other words: Durden’s lens tilts toward the churned float and recent receipts; the broader UTXO-sum trackers still carry the cushioning effect of old coins that haven’t had to “reprice” on-chain.
Why this matters for Bitcoin’s next move
Further, the short-term holder’s realized price is near $91,000, while the long-term holder’s realized price is near $38,000. The aggregate realized price is around $54,000.
BTC today sits around $63,275, about -48.766% from the prior all-time high.
That is deep enough to knock leverage loose, but shallow enough to keep the “this is still expensive” instinct alive in the broader public narrative.
The emotional mismatch comes from that combination: a high nominal sticker with a low profitability ratio.
It is the kind of setup that produces quiet capitulation. It happens in steps, in forced sales, in smaller wallets going flat, and in larger wallets waiting for liquidity to return.
The corridor the market keeps trading back into
Glassnode’s most recent framing pulls the corridor slightly lower: the True Market Mean sits near ~$79,000, and the Realized Price near ~$54,000.
It frames them as structural markers for active cost basis and historical re-engagement behavior, according to Glassnode’s Week On-chain.
Think of it as a corridor made of receipts. The upper band marks where active buyers, as a group, get their breath back.
The lower band marks where longer-term capital has tended to step in when the tape looks broken.
Inside that corridor, Glassnode previously highlighted a dense URPD cluster from $66,900 to $70,600.
At $63,000 spot, that cluster reads less like a place to “settle” and more like the first overhead shelf a rebound has to reclaim before any recovery narrative can breathe.
More broadly, Glassnode’s latest Week On-chain describes a dense demand zone between $60k and $69,000 absorbing sell pressure, a wider cluster that now matters because it is the range the market is actually leaning on.
This matters for a profitability-collapse story because the first job of any rebound is mechanical.
Price has to trade through dense cost-basis zones, and it has to do so with enough volume that sellers get absorbed instead of rewarded for waiting.
The ledger already shows stress as a cash-flow fact. Glassnode reports realized losses with a seven-day SMA above about $1.26 billion per day, with spikes above $2.4 billion per day during sharp sell windows.
That is what capitulation looks like when you measure it in transactions instead of sentiment.
At the same time, front-end implied volatility repriced toward about 70%, and downside skew steepened.
Together, that reads like a market paying for near-term protection and treating discontinuity as a normal operating condition.
That vol level offers a clean way to talk about range using a simple implied cone.
BTC around $63,300 with 70% annualized IV maps to roughly ±9.7% over one week (about $57,100 to $69,400) and roughly ±20.1% over one month (about $50,600 to $76,000).
It is a forecast of turbulence and a reminder that the market’s gears still spin fast even when the narrative slows down.
Flows, overhead supply, and the bid that flickers
Profitability collapses become consequential when they meet flow regimes, and the past few weeks look like a regime that lost some of its steady demand.
Glassnode describes allocator demand softening and spot volume staying structurally weak, which turns relief rallies into corrective moves that struggle to become trend changes.
The ETF tape helps frame that shift in daily increments.
Since October’s all-time high, billions have left ETFs in outflows, with coins leaving on the majority of trading day this year, with occasional inflows.
Stablecoins add a second flow lens because they function as the market’s wrapper, keeping value on-chain while investors choose when to take exposure.
This month, CryptoSlate reported more than $4 billion net stablecoin withdrawals from exchanges, including about $3.1 billion from Binance.
That followed an earlier October 2025 period with about $9.7 billion average monthly net inflows.
Together, it supports a picture of capital stepping back from immediate deployment and shifting into a more defensive posture.
Mining adds a third pressure point because miners carry a real-world cost curve and a treasury that can become a seller in stressed tapes.
Hashrate Index put USD hashprice around $34.05 per PH per day and described the forward market implying about $28.73 on average across six months.
That is a tight operating environment that can turn into forced sales if price breaks below key demand clusters and financing stays expensive.
Overhead supply is the consequence that binds these threads.
CryptoSlate’s supply guide from earlier this month frames overhead supply around $93,000 to $110,000 and flags a short-term holder cost basis near $98,300.
Those levels can act like taped seams in the market’s plumbing, holding pressure until the system trades enough volume through them to seal the leaks.
In a profitability-compression regime, those seams define where break-even selling emerges.
They also help explain why rallies can feel heavy even when the headlines turn brighter.
Macro context, the outside weather that seeps into the pipes
Crypto trades inside the global risk budget, and recent macro stress has shown up in the usual cross-market tells.
A U.S. tariff legal headline coincided with a move described as USD down, gold up, and bitcoin down.
That fits the pattern of liquidity sensitivity during stress events.
On rates, the Bank of England held at 3.75% with a 5–4 split and said Bank Rate is “likely to be reduced further” depending on inflation.
That is an easing bias paired with ongoing uncertainty.
U.S. rate expectations sit in the same neighborhood.
BlackRock’s iShares outlook described a drift in the expected 2026 path from 3.50–3.75% toward about 3% and noted leadership uncertainty as part of that backdrop.
Morgan Stanley Research laid out additional 25-basis-point cuts to a 3.0–3.25% terminal range.
It paired that with a view that tariffs temporarily lift inflation and that unemployment peaks around 4.7% in Q2 2026.
This macro layer matters for the supply-in-profit story in a practical way.
Easing expectations can support a rebound, but the on-chain picture still hinges on crypto-native liquidity, ETF flows, stablecoin deployment, and spot demand.
Those are the pipes that carry new risk appetite into the market’s actual order books.
Scenarios, framed as triggers and corridors
Glassnode provides three that matter here: the $60,000–$69,000 demand zone the market is leaning on, the $66,900 to $70,600 dense URPD shelf, and the True Market Mean near ~$79,000, with the Realized Price near ~$54,900 as the deeper structural floor.
A base case looks like absorption and range.
Price churns inside the $60,000–$69,000 demand band, realized losses cool from their recent pace, ETF flow days move closer to flat, and volatility gradually compresses from elevated levels.
In that world, the market’s “tell” is whether it can reclaim the $66,900–$70,600 shelf and hold it, not as a wick, but as a lived-in level.
A downside case looks like deeper capitulation.
Price loses the lower end of the demand zone with momentum, liquidations accelerate, miner economics tighten into more treasury selling, and the tape trades down toward the Realized Price near ~$54,900.
That is the historical zone where longer-term capital has tended to re-engage and where the market often tries to rebuild credibility after a break.
An upside case looks like a violent rebound into overhead supply.
Price reclaims the True Market Mean near ~$79,000, the market tests higher cost-basis bands, and the next heavy seam sits in the $93,000 to $110,000 overhead region.
The short-term holder cost basis near $98,300 is a level where break-even selling can appear quickly if liquidity stays patchy.
Across all three, the profitability collapse functions as a behavioral constraint.
Underwater holders tend to sell when they get air, which means each rally has to do extra work and absorb inventory from recent buyers who want their receipt back.
