Bitcoins
Ananda Banerjee
4 min read
Bitcoin trades near $87,820, flat on the day and still down about 4% over the last 30 days. Buyers appear at every Bitcoin price dip, but each bounce has failed to move outside the same narrow range. The chart now shows a clear reason why attempts keep stalling.
The short answer: Bitcoin’s unlucky 13 problem. A key on-chain resistance level sits 13% above the current price, and until it breaks, upside keeps fading before momentum can form.
Glassnode’s Short-Term Holder Cost Basis model tracks the average price where recent buyers hold coins. Short-term holders usually react fastest to volatility. When prices trade below their entry, they sell to avoid deeper losses. This creates an automatic layer of sell pressure that acts like a ceiling on the chart.
Right now, that cost basis sits at $99,790, roughly 13% above spot. At $87,820 (current price), most recent buyers are underwater. This explains why every Bitcoin rally fades before it can build toward a breakout: sellers keep stepping in early.
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HODL Waves data, a metric that segregates cohorts by holding age, confirms this behavior. The 1-day to 1-week cohort (short-term cohort) dropped from 6.38% of supply on November 27 to 2.13% on December 27. These newer buyers are offloading coins rather than holding them, which reinforces resistance before Bitcoin even reaches $99,790.
This makes $99,790 the most important resistance on Bitcoin’s chart, in the near term. It is worth noting that this on-chain resistance level is dynamic and could shift depending on the spot price. Therefore, we would also want a level verification on the technical chart.
🔄 Update:
With the spot price trading around $87.8K, the key on-chain price models have now shifted slightly:
🔴 STH Cost Basis: $99.9K
— Spot Price: $87.8K —
🟡 Active Investors Mean: $87.7k
🟢True Market Mean: $81.1K
🔵 Realized Price: $56.2K📊… https://t.co/fFvqUJWtEY pic.twitter.com/xJDXFIgud5
— glassnode (@glassnode) December 28, 2025
If price reclaims it, short-term holders flip into profit, forced selling probably stops, and the supply pressure that blocked every bounce begins to fade.
On the 12-hour chart, Bitcoin trades inside a symmetrical triangle. A symmetrical triangle forms when lower highs and higher lows compress into a point, signaling indecision between buyers and sellers. It is a neutral pattern that needs a breakout to confirm direction.
The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) measures whether big money is flowing into or out of the market by tracking volume pressure. CMF is rising with price, which means buyers are participating, but it remains below the zero line.
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