Is Bitcoin’s $87K Breakout Sustainable? CryptoQuant Flags Potential Red Flags

Bearish market conditions for bitcoin (BTC) have remained persistent over the last few weeks, with selling activity from large investors and major players exacerbating the negative trend.

A weekly report from the on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant revealed that although daily BTC selling from large investors has eased up a bit, Bitcoin miners are still offloading their assets at a significant rate.

Miners Are Selling Their BTC

Since late February, whales have been realizing losses due to the drop in bitcoin’s price. This came after they took profits in January amid bitcoin’s ascent above the $100,000 range. While this cohort of investors is still realizing losses, their daily BTC sales have fallen from 800,000 in late February to about 300,000.

Since early April, whales’ total BTC balance has plummeted from 3.537 million to 3.500 million, and their monthly accumulation percentage growth has dropped to zero. Whales have been accumulating BTC at the slowest monthly pace since February—their monthly accumulation rate has fallen from 2.7% at the end of March to 0.5% presently.

While bitcoin’s price continues to stall, miners have increased their selling pressure to stay afloat. Their outflows surged to 15,000 BTC on April 7, when BTC fell below $74,000. Analysts say this was the third-largest daily outflow so far in 2025. Adding to miners’ woes is the rising Bitcoin network hashrate, which indicates that it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to mine BTC.

Coupled with low transaction fees, the average operating margin for miners has plunged from 53% in late January to 33% today.

BTC Still in Bearish Territory

As miners and whales struggle to adjust to the ongoing market trend, BTC remains in one of its least bullish phases since November 2022. As revealed in previous reports, the Bull Score Model, which measures the bullish percentage of on-chain and market metrics from 0 to 100, is still in bearish territory.

The index is still hovering at 20, revealing that investor sentiment is still weak and that there is a low probability of a sustained rally in the near term. The Bull Score Index is experiencing its longest streak of days in bearish territory since September 2022, when BTC was in a bear market. This model has remained below 50 for 58 of the past 60 days, a pattern seen in July 2021, January 2022, and June 2022 during major market corrections.

Nevertheless, BTC managed to break out of its recent consolidation phase on Monday morning and chart a multi-week peak of over $87,500.