Breaking Through $70,000: How Hourly Profit Data Reveals Bitcoin's Liquidity Challenge

According to Glassnode’s latest analysis, Bitcoin’s struggle to sustain momentum above the $70,000 level reflects a deeper market condition—one characterized by persistent liquidity constraints. The analytics firm’s examination of key market metrics provides critical insight into why per-hour realized profit accumulation, despite reaching significant levels, cannot translate into sustained price recovery. Current BTC trading near $65.81K with a 24-hour decline of 3.34% underscores this ongoing tension between supply-side pressure and demand-side weakness.

When Derivatives Liquidity Dries Up: The 90-Day Moving Average Warning

Glassnode’s first indicator of constrained market conditions emerges from the 90-day moving average of open interest percentage changes across leading cryptocurrencies. Since October 2025, this crucial metric has remained consistently negative, signaling a troubling withdrawal of speculative positioning in derivatives markets. This sustained decline tells a compelling story: traders are not just reluctant to enter borrowed positions—they’re actively reducing exposure. The propensity to leverage across futures and perpetuals has not recovered to historical norms, leaving the market in a systematically under-leveraged state. This structural deficit in derivatives demand creates a vacuum where natural buying pressure should exist.

$70,000 Per Hour: The Critical Price Level Where Profit-Taking Stalls

The second and most tangible evidence of liquidity constraints centers on Bitcoin’s $70,000 resistance zone. Since early February 2026, every attempt by BTC to reclaim this psychologically significant level has encountered immediate rejection from the buy-side. What makes this particularly telling is that the market has been unable to absorb even modest profit-taking—averaging just over 5 million dollars per hour in realized gains—without systematically rejecting further upward price movement. This represents a dramatic shift in market capacity. For context, during the euphoric bull phase of Q3 2025, markets routinely digested 200 to 350 million dollars per hour in realized profits without triggering systematic sell-side pressure. The ratio of then versus now illustrates the magnitude of today’s liquidity compression.

Market Sentiment: The Missing Ingredient for Recovery

The combination of negative open interest trends and price rejection at $70,000 points to a singular conclusion: current market conditions lack the sentiment foundation necessary to drive Bitcoin higher. Per-hour profit realization data indicates that even when wealth generation occurs, market participants show little appetite to reinvest gains or add fresh exposure. Without a meaningful shift in market psychology and risk appetite, Bitcoin’s ascent through the $70,000-$80,000 corridor will remain exceptionally challenging. Glassnode’s analysis suggests that recovery now depends less on technical factors than on the restoration of confidence and demand in both spot and derivatives markets.