Bitcoin slipped to $79,000 on Wednesday as traders booked profits after a 23% rally over the previous seven days. Spot ETF demand held firm through the pullback, and derivatives data pointed to a pause rather than a reversal.
Bitcoin dropped to $78,768.59, down about 1.2% over 24 hours, as traders locked in gains from a seven-day run that added 23%. The broader CoinDesk 20 index fell 2.1% over the same period.
ETF inflows hold steady despite the pullback
Underlying demand has not cracked. U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs took in $314 million on Tuesday, a seventh straight day of net inflows that lifted the August total above $3 billion, according to SoSoValue data. Meanwhile, sentiment has cooled from its recent extreme: Alternative.me's Crypto Fear & Greed Index jumped to 74 from 27 less than two weeks earlier before easing back.
Pedro Fontes, a research analyst at Mercado Bitcoin, pointed to $82,000 and $85,000 as the next resistance levels and said some consolidation would be natural after such a vertical advance.
Futures data suggests a pause, not a reversal
Bitcoin's spot price pulled back to $78,500 while futures open interest continued to decline, falling below 700,000 BTC. That combination signals traders are unwinding positions rather than aggressively opening new shorts against the dip, with ether and XRP markets showing the same pattern. Still, the taker long-short volume ratio flipped bearish ahead of key data releases, with shorts accounting for 51.64% of the 24-hour flow.
Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continued reversing its recent spike, signaling calmer conditions ahead. Traders on Deribit are increasingly chasing bitcoin call options at strike prices between $82,000 and $100,000, a bullish signal as traders probably expect bitcoin to trade around $80,000 in a typical consolidation.
Source: CoinDesk
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