Bitcoin Bulls Need ETF Inflows — Reclaim $112,500 to Rally

Quick snapshot: BTC wobble, but not full meltdown

Bitcoin is trading near $101,328 and recently gave up a small bounce that had pushed it to about $103,885. Two dips under $100,000 on Nov. 4 and 5 pulled the rug on short-term optimism, and on-chain signals are saying demand momentum has cooled.

Think of it as a mid-cycle coffee break: prices are taking a sip rather than running a marathon. Roughly 71% of circulating Bitcoin is still in profit at this level, which sits near the lower edge of the usual 70–90% comfort zone you see during slowdowns. That range tends to produce quick relief rallies, but anything lasting usually needs buyers to hang around for longer.

Unrealized losses aren’t shouting “panic” yet — the metric that measures total unrealized losses sits near 3.1%, well under the 5% line traders often associate with panicked selling (far below the 10%+ seen in the 2022–2023 bear market). In short: messy, but orderly for now.

What bulls actually need (two things, no cheat codes)

There are two obvious flips that would make life a lot easier for the bulls. First, spot ETF flows need to switch from steady outflows back to net positive. We saw consistent withdrawals the last couple of weeks — daily outflows in the hundreds of millions — after a stretch of healthy inflows in September and October. Until that demand shows up again, rally attempts get met by profit-taking.

Second, price needs to reclaim the Short-Term Holders’ average cost basis at about $112,500 and hold it as support. That level matters because when short-term holders are underwater, selling pressure tends to pick up. Right now Bitcoin sits roughly 11% below that threshold; getting back above would take a lot of sting out of the market.

If those two things don’t happen, the market could drift toward the Active Investors’ realized price zone near $88,500 — a place that historically corresponds to deeper corrective phases. In plain English: no ETF inflows and no reclaim of $112.5k means the downside risk increases.

Under the hood there are some extra wrinkles. Since July, long-term holders have trimmed position sizes by about 300,000 BTC, dropping from roughly 14.7 million to 14.4 million coins — and when you count coins that recently matured (aged past the short-term threshold), the overall spending since July looks closer to 2.4 million BTC. Strip out maturations and that selling equals a big chunk of circulating supply — roughly a 12% swing — which is not small change.

On the trading desk level, flow and order-book signals line up with the cautious mood. Cumulative volume delta is negative across major venues — for example, Binance’s CVD has been negative by hundreds of BTC recently while Coinbase has been roughly neutral. Perpetual futures directional premium (basically the interest paid by longs) has shrunk from about $338 million per month in April to roughly $118 million now, showing traders are dialing back leveraged long bets.

Options traders are also buying protection: demand for puts is elevated, short-term implied volatility spiked into the mid-50s during the selloff before easing by roughly 10 vol points, and put premiums at the $100k strike jumped as the sell-off unfolded. In short: market participants are hedging rather than placing big bets on an immediate reversal.

The bottom line: the market is fragile — oversold enough to be interesting, but not so beaten up that everyone’s running for the exits. The next clear direction depends on whether fresh buying shows up to absorb the selling and whether the price can convincingly flip $112,500 into support. Until both happen, bulls are basically waiting at a traffic light — and it’s stuck on yellow.