Bitcoin Range Traps Traders At $65K – Are Long-Term Holders Finally Giving Up?
Bitcoin price is on the verge of a full risk spill after a sell-off after expiration, a series of monthly closes in the red, and political tensions.
Bitcoin Remains Rangebound
On March 30th QCP Market Color reports that Bitcoin briefly fell to around $65k during thin Asian trading (a window of low currency where small orders can make prices move around disproportionately). It then moved back to its usual weekend band between $66k and $67k.
Throughout the month, this has been a repeating pattern: the price lowers into the weekend as traders reduce risk, then rises again as the new week begins.
Bitcoin is likely to remain stuck in its current range as Trump’s 10-day moratorium on strikes against Iran’s energy supplies nears its end on April 6, a point where traders are looking for a major breakout.
Related Reading
In the option, the compression of post-expiration changes is “muted”; sellers still pay gamma, overwrites are sidelined, and vol surface shows warning but not panic. A stop is more protective than bullish, which equates to a market that is stable but not yet ready to move higher.
Everything points to Bitcoin heading for a sixth straight monthly negative close and its first three months of losses to start the year, highlighting just how fragile sentiment is.
Political Tensions Are on the Rise
According to the QCP, “Washington shows a growing risk”. The US insists that talks are moving forward, but the military’s progress shows it is still preparing to operate on the ground. Meanwhile, Iran’s allies in Yemen have been warning they could disrupt key supply routes if the conflict escalates.
Any blockade on the Bab al-Mandeb strait could significantly increase the existing inflationary shock, a situation that the administration cannot eliminate with approval rates and neutrality on the horizon.
Macro and geopolitics are tightly intertwined. High oil, war risk premium and supply-chain vulnerability keep the popular narrative of stagflation alive, further blurring Bitcoin’s role as a high beta risk asset and emerging macro hedge.
As long as the Trump strike remains intact and there are no major policy surprises, BTC is likely to remain tied and driven forward into early April.
“Most Market Participants Operate at a Loss”
On-chain, all of this friction translates into a Long-term Owner SOPR (profit) that recently slipped below 1.0, new data from Crypto Dan of Crypto Quant shows. Veteran owners are now selling at a loss: old “sacrifice” or premature behavior.
Since long-term holders tend to be less responsive to short-term price changes, the time when they start to lock in losses usually indicates that the rest of the market has entered a payoff phase.
Bitcoin: Long Term Holder SOPR. Source: Crypto Quant.
According to Crypto Dan, these types of conditions often precede phases where selling pressure slowly dissipates, paving the way for market lows or areas that sit close to long-term declines. The analyst believes that it may be too early to call this a definitive base, but the stage where losses are widely shared often marks the last leg of fear and the first real window of opportunity for patient buyers.
Related Reading
Combined, the price bound to the range, hidden options, and long-term owner pressure suggest that we are in a late correction phase, when the market is still under pressure but is close to washing out and stabilizing, not yet in a clear new leg when the price starts to trend upwards with confidence.
At the moment of writing, BTC trades for $66k. Source: BTCUSDT on Tradingview
Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSDT chart from Tradingview
