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Bitcoin’s violent futures deleveraging earlier this month reset market positioning but did not break the broader bull trend, according to Julio Moreno, Head of Research at CryptoQuant. Speaking on the Milk Road podcast on October 20, Moreno argued that the path to fresh highs remains open if spot demand stabilizes and the macro overhang from US–China tariff negotiations clears. The key inflection he’s watching is Bitcoin reclaiming its on-chain traders’ realized price near $115,000. “The resistance will be around $115K,” he said. “If the price goes above that… the range that we could expect is $150–$195K. To the downside… it’s around like $100K.”
Bitcoin Bull Run Is Reset
Moreno characterized the October 10 deleveraging as the largest dollar liquidation in the history of Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetuals, with roughly $20 billion in open interest wiped out in a single day as total OI fell from an all-time high near $78 billion to around $58 billion, later hovering closer to $56 billion. He noted that in unit terms the event was “a little bit short of the FTX liquidations,” but emphasized that the dollar magnitude reflected today’s larger derivatives base, not a structural break.
The relative resilience of spot price—Bitcoin “only got to… $110,000” that day, after a wick to “103,000” two days prior—underscored, in his view, that demand and the cycle’s price floor sit well above prior cycles even amid forced unwinds. “It doesn’t put you in a bearish market,” Moreno said, adding that buyers still absorbed supply quickly enough to avert a trend break.
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CryptoQuant’s composite “bull score” of ten on-chain indicators had already rolled over before the crash, dropping from roughly 80 to 40 by October 6 as momentum cooled and spot demand began to contract. After the liquidation, the score slid toward 20, which Moreno described as “on the bearish side right now.” He stressed that on-chain metrics are not price predictors so much as risk gauges: “It’s going to signal to you the risks… when all these metrics… converge into telling you there’s increasing risks, then it’s when you have to be more careful.”
Several datapoints pointed to a market that was stretched into the shock. Total crypto open interest set a record near $78 billion just before the event, a classic over-leverage tell. Profit-taking surged above $3 billion in early October as spot neared the prior all-time high in the $124K–$126K zone, fitting CryptoQuant’s “profit–pause–push” framework in which aggressive realization precedes cooling.
Moreno also highlighted that spot demand flipped from growth to contraction around October 6—days before tariff headlines and the liquidation—helping explain why the risk backdrop was deteriorating even without the macro spark. “We were starting to see some high profit taking… not only because of the macro events,” he said.
Who’s Selling, Who’s Buying Bitcoin?
The compositional flow of coins during the drawdown supports the view of a rotation rather than a structural buyer strike. Moreno said “OG” whales and early miners—an aggregate cohort he estimates hold roughly 600,000 BTC excluding Satoshi—resumed distribution as prices pushed past $100K, a recurring dynamic in every cycle as supply migrates to new hands. Institutional demand, by contrast, remained steady.
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Because ETF custodial wallets often bucket between 100 and 1,000 BTC per address for security, CryptoQuant tracks that “dolphins” cohort as a proxy. “That cohort… is still buying,” Moreno said, adding that whales increased their accumulation “during this correction,” with year-over-year holdings expanding “above trend.” Liquidity conditions corroborate the bid: stablecoin market caps, led by USDT, continued to expand through the drawdown, a pattern he would not expect “if we are… in a bear market.”
Altcoins were far more fragile around the shock. Transactions sending altcoins to exchanges spiked to year-to-date highs during the liquidation, signaling a scramble for exits across low-liquidity names. Moreno cautioned that this cycle has been notably selective across sectors rather than a blanket “alt season,” and reiterated a theme that has become more obvious in 2025: robust protocol activity and fee generation no longer translate mechanically into token outperformance without explicit economic linkage. “Even if the protocol is doing well doesn’t necessarily mean that the token is going to do well,” he said.
What To Expect From Q4 And 2026
Macro remains the wild card for Q4. Moreno believes rate-cut expectations are largely embedded—“the market already… has priced what the Fed will do”—and that only an unexpectedly large cut would be a fresh positive catalyst. By contrast, the US–China tariff trajectory is front-and-center. “If we get that out of the way then… a really positive Q4 can resume,” he said, noting that tariff headlines were the proximate trigger for October’s deleveraging and were also behind a sharper demand contraction back in March–May. Until clarity returns and spot demand re-accelerates, he expects chop around well-defined levels.
That leaves Bitcoin boxed between a tactical resistance and a psychological floor. Moreno pegs the traders’ on-chain realized price near $115,000 as first resistance and the $100,000 area—where short-term holders sit on roughly a 10% unrealized loss—as the downside line where forced selling typically abates in bull markets.
A decisive reclaim of $115K would, in his model, validate a run toward $150,000–$195,000. “We’re not that far… from the previous all-time high,” he said, adding that new highs in Q4 are plausible if the tariff overhang resolves. As for the cycle peak, he leans against an extended mania deep into 2026 or 2027, citing CryptoQuant’s diminishing-intensity bull readout even as price has risen. “I would not expect… more than Q1 2026,” he said, with the caveat that timing tops remains guesswork. “Probably we all are going to be wrong.”
At press time, BTC traded at $108,187.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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Jake Simmons
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