The rally had a name: Rektember. The shorts got steamrolled. The news cycle did its victory lap. And then the data quietly flipped the whole story.
The receipts
- Bitcoin ran to an eight-month high near $87,400. CryptoQuant’s Bull Score climbed to 90/100. Sentiment hit its greediest reading since July 2025.
- Apparent spot demand contracted by about 170,000 BTC over the past 30 days (CryptoQuant). The rally was not bought with cash.
- ETF daily inflows fell 97% in a week – from about $1 billion to $31 million by Sept 28.
- Futures demand growth collapsed from 164,000 BTC to about 16,000 BTC between Sept 14 and now.
- Short-term traders’ unrealized profit margin hit 33%, the highest since December 2024 – the largest pool of gains ever available to be realized.
- Holders booked profits on 25,700 BTC in a single day on Sept 22 – the biggest realized-profit day of 2026, right at the top of the range.
- About 90% of combined Binance trading volume is futures (spot-to-futures ratio ~0.12). Open interest is down to ~$9.2B and coin-denominated open interest is down ~20% to its lowest since March.
- The advance swept through the largest short-liquidation clusters of the past 365 days. The biggest forced-buying pool of the year is gone.
The squeeze you celebrated was the fuel. It is spent. And the data says the biggest unliquidated clusters that are left are on the long side.
If Bitcoin keeps going up, the people forced to buy are getting thinner. If it starts coming down, the leveraged longs get called – and this time the forced flow is selling.
The levels that now matter
- $80,000 – the 365-day moving average. CryptoQuant marked the start of the new bull phase when Bitcoin reclaimed this line. This is the bull’s birth certificate. It breaks, the story rewrites itself.
- $81,722 – the estimated average cost basis of the typical spot ETF holder (Bloomberg’s James Seyffart, Sept 21). A ~2.2% decline from the mid-$83,000s puts the average ETF buyer back underwater.
- $84,000-$85,000 – Glassnode’s largest cluster of long-term-holder supply, overhead.
- $71,000 – 200-day moving average.
- $67,000 – traders’ realized price.
We covered the other side of this move when Cramer’s sell call got steamrolled and $850M of shorts burned. That was the squeeze. This is what the squeeze leaves behind.
Them vs us
They bought the bull market through a custodial fund, on leverage, on the news cycle. They are second in line behind the exchange, the fund, and the broker. When $80,000 breaks, their stop-losses queue up behind the exit.
You hold the key. No fund decides when your Bitcoin can be sold. No liquidation engine touches what sits in your own wallet. When the leveraged longs flush and the price finds the floor, self-custody is the difference between a drawdown you can hold through and a cascade that ends with someone else’s frozen account.
The Love Is Bitcoin Takeaway
The bull phase is real. The structure under it just changed. Follow the cost basis, not the cheerleading.
Full story: loveisbitcoin.com
Coupon: LOVEISBITCOIN
This is not financial advice. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Do your own research.
Source: CryptoSlate – Bitcoin’s $87,000 rally just flipped from short squeeze to long risk
