On-chain data shows the Bitcoin short-term holders have recently participated in the biggest loss-taking event of the present cycle.
Bitcoin Short-Term Holder Realized Loss Has Hit High Levels Recently
In its latest weekly report, the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has talked about how the situation of the Bitcoin short-term holders has modified following the market downturn.
The “short-term holders” (STHs) discuss with the BTC investors who purchased their coins inside the past 155 days. This cohort includes the brand new entrants into the market, who don’t are inclined to be too resolute. As such, it’s not unusual to see the group participating in a panic selloff, each time some form of volatility emerges out there.
The recent price decline has been one such moment. First, here’s a chart shared by the analytics firm that shows how the Relative Unrealized Loss of the STHs has developed during this event:
Looks just like the value of the metric has observed a spike in recent days | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 11, 2025
The “Relative Unrealized Loss” measures, as its name suggests, the whole amount of loss that the STHs are holding onto. The ‘relative’ within the indicator’s name refers back to the indisputable fact that this loss has been normalized in keeping with the market cap.
As is visible within the graph, the Bitcoin STH Relative Unrealized Loss has observed a major increase recently and has reached the upper threshold for losses recorded in bull markets historically (the red line).
Glassnode notes, though, “despite these elevated paper losses, the financial damage carried by recent investors stays largely in step with the yen-carry-trade unwind on 5-Aug-2024.”
So long as an investor keeps sitting on their loss, it stays unrealized, but once they determine to make a transaction involving the underwater tokens, the loss is claimed to be ‘realized.’
On condition that a portion of the group has been pushed underwater in the most recent crash, it will be expected that the fickle-minded members of it will have capitulated at some loss. Here is one other chart, this time for the loss that the STHs have actually realized:
The trend within the STH Realized Loss over the previous couple of years | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 11, 2025
As displayed within the above graph, the 30-day sum of the Bitcoin STH Realized Loss has reached the $7 billion mark recently, which is the very best value witnessed in the present cycle to this point.
It’s also apparent from the chart, nonetheless, that while these losses are sizeable on their very own, the identical isn’t the case when stacked against the main capitulation events of the previous cycle.
Within the loss-taking event that followed the May 2021 selloff, the indicator’s value reached $19.8 billion. Similarly, it reached a high of $20.7 billion in the course of the 2022 bear market. Each of those are clearly much larger in scale than the most recent capitulation.
BTC Price
On the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $85,000, up almost 4% within the last 24 hours.
Looks like the value of the coin has been marching up over the past day | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, Glassnode.com, chart from TradingView.com
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