The founder of CryptoQuant doesn’t think Bitcoin will see a big drop of more than 50% like in past bear markets and instead sees sideways action ahead.
Bitcoin has seen a slowdown in realized cap recently
In the new one publish at X, CrypotQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju talked about how capital inflows into Bitcoin have dried up recently. The on-chain indicator that Young Ju cited is “Realized Cap,” which measures the total value of a cryptocurrency assuming that the value of each token in circulation is the same as when it last changed hands.
In short, what Realized Cap stands for is the total amount of capital that property investors as a whole have put into the network. Changes in the metric therefore indicate capital outflows or inflows relative to BTC. As shown in the chart above, Bitcoin Realized Cap saw a sharp increase between late 2023 and late 2025, indicating that the coin has continuously received capital injections.
Recently, however, the upward trend of the indicator has seemingly been interrupted, and its value has faced a small net decline. In the past, bull markets have coincided with an upward trajectory in Realized Cap, with transitions to weak inflows or net outflows leading to bearish phases.
Considering that the trend of the metric now points to the latter type of market conditions, it is possible that a bearish trend is occurring for the cryptocurrency. However, the analyst pointed out that the latest cycle is not the same as the previous one.
“Liquidity channels are more diverse now, so timing inflows is meaningless,” Young Ju noted. “Institutions holding long have broken the old cycle of retail whales.” Examples of demand channels that did not exist before include treasury companies such as Strategy and investment vehicles such as spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
“I don’t think we will see a -50%+ decline from ATH like in past bear markets,” said the CryptoQuant founder. “Just boring on the sidelines for the next few months.” Now it remains to be seen which trajectory Bitcoin will end up on.
In other news, on-chain demand for Realized Cap isn’t the only one that’s been down recently. As CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn pointed out in X publishdemand from small investors was also absent.
The chart shows the 30-day percentage change in volume metric associated with retail investors, the smallest investors on the network. This indicator has recently been negative, indicating that the volume of transactions worth less than $10,000 has been declining on a monthly time frame.
That hasn’t changed even after Bitcoin’s recent recovery. “The crowd hasn’t returned yet,” Maartunn noted.
The price of BTC
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is hovering around $89,900, up 2% over the past seven days.
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