Bitcoin's Bull Score Hits 90 While Spot Demand Falls 170,000 BTC

CryptoQuant's Bull Score Index reads 90 out of 100, and the same firm's other readings point the other way. Apparent demand for bitcoin has contracted by about 170,000 BTC over the past 30 days. Buyers who came in recently sit on an average unrealized profit of 33%, the widest that margin has been since December 2024. Bitcoin traded near $83,300 on Wednesday morning in Asia, below the eight-month high it set on 21 September.

One gauge up, the other down

The Bull Score crossed 90 after bitcoin broke above its 365-day moving average, which makes it a trend measure rather than a demand measure. Apparent demand, CryptoQuant's estimate of how much new supply the market is absorbing, moved the opposite way over the same stretch. crypto.news, writing on Wednesday, set the two side by side: one number describes the state of a trend, the other asks whether the market is taking in new supply at the same pace. Julio Moreno of CryptoQuant gave the shorter version.

"Without fresh demand, rallies struggle to extend," Moreno said.

The profit sitting on the newest coins

The 33% figure is the average unrealized gain held by short-term traders. The Block, publishing at 3:14 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, calls it a 21-month high; CoinDesk's Wednesday piece dates the same reading to December 2024. Those are the same number in two framings, and they agree. Holders took profit on 25,700 BTC on 22 September, the largest single day of 2026 on CryptoQuant's count, and altcoin deposit transactions ran to 76,000 over seven days, the highest since October 2025. Coins sitting on an exchange are coins within reach of a sale, though nothing in the data says they will be sold.

Futures demand stopped first

Speculative futures growth fell from 164,000 BTC on 14 September to 16,000 BTC by 29 September, a drop of roughly 90% in fifteen days. CoinDesk and The Block carry that pair of numbers and both attribute it to CryptoQuant, which is as close to confirmation as a single analytics vendor allows. Strategy's purchase of 1,665 coins took its stack to 847,666 BTC, a running total only crypto.news carried in this sweep. It is one buyer against a 170,000-coin hole.

Where the lines are drawn

CryptoQuant's own map puts first support at the 365-day moving average near $80,000, then the 200-day near $71,000, then the realized price near $67,000. That ladder appears in The Block's account and nowhere else read here, so it stands single-sourced. Traders quoted by CoinDesk draw the line higher. Jeff Anderson of STS Digital named $82,000 and said a breakdown would probably take bitcoin into the high 70s, while Lacie Zhang of Bitget Wallet gave a band of $81,500 to $83,000. Iliya Kalchev of Nexo Dispatch put the failure point below $80,000, the only one of the three readings that sits under CryptoQuant's first support.

The peak everyone is measuring down from is itself unsettled. CoinDesk put that eight-month high at $87,400 in one Wednesday piece and at $87,300 in another published the same day, with no correction on either. Treasury yields remain the background pressure, the 30-year passing 5.6% on Wednesday for its highest since June 2002, after the 10-year's run to a 2007 high last week. What nobody has published is a demand figure covering only the days since 21 September, separate from a 30-day window that still contains the selling before it. Until that exists, the Bull Score and the demand line keep pointing in opposite directions and both of them are correct.