'Buyers Are Absent'—Glassnode Warning Has Bitcoin Braced For $58,500

Why Seller Exhaustion Matters For Bitcoin Price Predictions

Michael Terpin, the Transform Group founder CNBC once dubbed "the godfather of crypto," has argued since April that this is the signal that ends a bitcoin bear market, part of his call for an October bottom near $57,000. "When there's a lower low that doesn't go any lower, that's it," Terpin said on the On The Margin podcast. "And usually that's identified by complete exhaustion of selling."

"Both of those ended with a V-shaped recovery," Terpin said of this bear's two sharp drops so far, including February's dip to $60,000. "That doesn't happen at capitulation."

"Every bear market more comes out to exchanges because the new retail newbies that tend to in every market panic to buy at the top and then they panic to sell at the bottom," Terpin said. "They usually only do that for one cycle."

"They tend to buy back about four to six weeks after the bottom because they're hoping it goes lower. And they don't want to get dumped on," Terpin said of the large holders he tracks on-chain.

Not Everyone Is Calling The Bitcoin Bottom

The Better Traders YouTube channel counted just two of ten Glassnode capitulation signals flashing in an Aug. 16 video and put the floor at $49,000 to $53,000. "Seller exhaustion isn't a bottom by itself," X user @ktx_intern replied to the data. "I'd want to see ETF flows and spot volume return before calling this accumulation."

"If you look at the last decade, Bitcoin destroys any other asset class," Terpin said in the same conversation. His bitcoin price prediction is unchanged: an October bottom near $57,000.

ETF inflows resumed in late July, a fraction of past waves, even as Goldman Sachs paid $2.25 billion for a ready-made bitcoin income ETF business. "However, leverage traders have already pulled the trigger on a recovery the data does not yet support," Glassnode wrote.