Bitcoin $68,700 resistance tied to recent buyers, Glassnode says
Glassnode’s reported data puts recent Bitcoin buyers’ average cost basis at $68,700, a level that may encourage break-even selling.
By Theo Nakamura · Staff Writer
· 3 min read
Bitcoin $68,700 resistance was the focus of an Aug. 13 Cointelegraph report on Glassnode’s on-chain analysis. The analytics firm’s view, as reported by Cointelegraph, is that recent buyers may sell when Bitcoin approaches their break-even point, potentially making it harder for the price to move higher.
For an investor watching the range, the key point is that this is an interpretation of wallet data, not proof that one group alone sets Bitcoin’s price. Glassnode said short-term holders, defined in the report as people who acquired BTC within the past six months, were about 7.2% underwater in aggregate.
Cointelegraph reported that Glassnode placed this group’s realized price, or aggregate cost basis, at $68,700. Cost basis is the average price associated with coins held by a group. When an investor who is sitting on a loss gets back to break-even, they may be more willing to sell. Glassnode said short-term holders have historically been quicker to sell during recoveries when underwater.
Why is $68,700 a Bitcoin resistance level?
Resistance is a price area where selling can slow or halt an advance. In this case, Glassnode’s thesis was that Bitcoin’s approach to the recent-buyer cost basis could bring break-even selling from that cohort. That is a probabilistic market reading, rather than a guarantee of what holders will do.
According to the Cointelegraph report, BTC/USD had traded between $58,000 and $68,000 since the beginning of June. The reported $68,700 short-term-holder cost basis sat above that range, while Bitcoin’s prior all-time high of $69,400, reached in November 2021, was immediately above it.
The cost-basis levels investors were watching
The $68,700 figure should not be confused with another measure highlighted in the report. Glassnode said Bitcoin was just above its median realized price of $63,000, a level that splits the cost basis of all coins in half. The firm said that $63,000 level had absorbed tests from above for more than a month.
A separate Bitfinex Alpha observation added context around the middle of the range. Cointelegraph reported that 1,794,308 BTC, equal to 8.93% of circulating supply, had a cost basis between $62,000 and $65,000. The largest holdings within that band were near $63,800, according to Bitfinex Alpha.
That estimate used UTXO Realized Price Distribution data, which the report defined as a record of the price at which coins last moved on-chain. Bitfinex Alpha said holders in the $62,000 to $65,000 band moved between profit and loss as Bitcoin traded there, contributing to substantial coin turnover.
Together, the reported figures map several reference points rather than a single decisive signal: $63,000 as the median realized-price level, $62,000 to $65,000 as a high-supply cost-basis band, $68,700 as the short-term-holder aggregate cost basis, and $69,400 as the nearby former record high.
This story draws on original reporting from Cointelegraph.
