Data Shows Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Have Started To Sell At A Loss

On-chain data shows Bitcoin short-term holders are increasingly selling at a loss following the latest crash in the crypto’s price.

Bitcoin Short-Term Holder SOPR Dips Further Below One

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, on-chain data shows that the STH SOPR has decreased to July levels, suggesting that short-term holders are increasingly realizing their losses.

The Spent Output Profit Ratio, or “SOPR” in short, is a Bitcoin indicator that tells us whether investors are selling at a loss or a profit during a given period.

The metric’s value is calculated by taking the ratio between the value of coins at spent time, and that at the time of creation.

If the SOPR drops below one, then it means investors are, on an average, selling at a loss. While if it floats above the threshold, then the overall market is making a profit. It being exactly equal to one implies holders are breaking even.

A slight modification of this indicator is the STH SOPR, which measures the profit ratio of only those coins that were held for less than 155 days before being sold.

These coins are usually assumed to be the short-term holder (STH) supply. So, the STH SOPR highlights whether these holders were selling in profit or not at a specific time.

Related Reading | Understanding Bitcoin UTXO: Mid-To-Long Term Holders Responsible For November Correction

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in this Bitcoin indicator over the past year:

Looks like the the value of the indicator has sharply dropped recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin STH SOPR declined to 0.95 yesterday. The last time similarly low values were observed was back in July.

These current low values suggest that short-term holders are increasingly dumping their coins at a loss right now. A similar trend was seen following the May BTC crash.

Related Reading | SEC Boss Acknowledges That Bitcoin Is A Competitor For U.S. Banking System

The analyst in the post thinks that either the coin may now follow a similar sideways movement as to the one seen then, or it may set up a final leg up for Bitcoin as was the case in July.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $48.4k, down 15% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 20% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of BTC over the last five days.

BTC's price has mostly moved sideways since the crash | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

A few days back, Bitcoin’s price crashed down to as low as $42k before jumping back up to current levels. Since then, the crypto has mostly consolidated sideways.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com