Bitcoin (BTC) sellers resumed their activity on Thursday as the BTC price slipped below the $70,000 mark.
Analysts said that Bitcoin showed signs of a bear market in its last stages, due to extreme fear and elevated realized and unrealized losses.
Key takeaways:
Bitcoin enters the last stages of the bear market, characterized by extreme fear and most BTC supply in loss.
High unrealized losses and a 96% drop in realized profits suggest “demand exhaustion.”
$70,000 remains the main BTC level to watch for now, with $65,000-$60,000 support below.
Bitcoin holder losses increase
Bitcoin’s bear market has seen its price draw down by more than 44% from its $126,000 all-time high, reached on Oct. 6, 2025.
This has pushed its Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL), the difference between total profits and losses currently held by investors, below 0.25, placing it in the “hope/fear zone,” according to data from CryptoQuant.
Related: $18.6B in Bitcoin options expire Friday: Should traders prepare for $75K BTC?
This means, “roughly 40% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply is held at a loss,” CryptoQuant analyst The Enigma Trader said in a Quicktake note.
Coupled with the Fear and Greed Index in the “Extreme Fear” at 15, this “reflects pain and uncertainty,” the analyst said, adding:
“A NUPL recovery above 0.25 would mark a transition into the optimism zone, a shift that has historically aligned with strengthening price momentum.”Bitcoin net unrealized profit and loss. Source: CryptoQuant
This structurally resembles conditions seen in previous bear markets, where the NUPL continued dropping to areas below 0 as Bitcoin found its bottom.
When analysing the volume of coins held at a loss as a fraction of total market capitalization, Glassnode found that the 7-day simple moving average (SMA) of relative unrealized losses has stabilized at 15%.
“This positions the current sentiment as one of elevated fear,” Glassnode said in its latest Week On-chain newsletter, adding:
“Historically, resolving this level of embedded loss requires either time, further price depression, or an extraordinary and sustained influx of…..
