Inside Bitcoin’s $111K-$117K Trenches: Glassnode Maps the Battlefield Between Fear and FOMO
The Quiet Accumulation That Drew the Line at $111K
To understand why $111,000 matters, rewind to late April’s drawdown. Spot-ETF inflows stalled, macro risk softened, and Bitcoin slid nearly 18 % from its all-time high. In that fog of pessimism, algorithmic funds began absorbing coins hand-over-fist. Glassnode’s Cost Basis Distribution shows a fat spike – almost 5 % of circulating supply – migrating to this single price band. The buyers were not retail optimists; exchange outflow data points to custody venues and multi-sig cold storage, the calling cards of long-horizon institutions.
The psychological implication is powerful: every revisit to $111K represents the collective break-even of entities that thought the sell-off was a bargain. Historically, such cohorts defend their cost basis with vigor, layering bids to protect unrealized gains. Unless a macro shock forces capitulation, the zone acts like reinforced concrete.
Profit-Takers Dig In at $117K — and Volatility Inches Higher
If $111K is the floor, $117K is the ceiling forged by FOMO. That bar encapsulates coins purchased near Bitcoin’s March peak. Holders here are underwater by single-digit percentages and, according to Glassnode’s Spent Output Profit Ratio, already showing a hair-trigger response to intraday green candles. Every push toward $117K sparks an uptick in exchange deposits, a sign that wallets are preparing to sell into strength.
Order-book heat-maps from Binance and Coinbase confirm the thesis: layered asks cluster in 500-coin blocks between $116.2K and $117.4K, refreshing faster than they are lifted. The result is a market that feels heavy even on modest volume, fueling intraday whipsaws that punish over-leveraged positions. In derivatives, open interest has rotated from quarterly futures to weekly options — a classic tell that traders prefer gamma scalps over directional bets while resistance looms overhead.
Why the Stablecoin Cannon Remains Loaded
Beneath the surface, another metric quietly loads the powder keg. Glassnode’s Stablecoin Supply Ratio (SSR) Oscillator just printed a cycle-low reading, indicating that stablecoin “dry powder” is abundant relative to circulating BTC. In previous cycles – July 2021 and November 2022 – comparable lows foreshadowed multi-week rallies as sidelined liquidity rotated into Bitcoin once sentiment flipped. The implication: should $117K finally crack, there’s ample ammunition to fuel a breakout, potentially forcing short gamma hedging and a swift march toward the next round number at $130K.
When One Side Blinks: Scenarios for the Summer Tape
The battleground is set, yet the catalyst remains undefined. A hotter-than-expected CPI print, for instance, could spook risk markets and drag Bitcoin through $111K, unmasking whether those April buyers are conviction-level hodlers or tourists in cold storage clothing. Conversely, renewed ETF inflows or a dovish Fed pivot could embolden bulls, sending price through the $117K blockade and unleashing the idle stablecoin reserves highlighted by the SSR oscillator.
Either way, the range is more than numbers on a chart; it is a ledger of collective psychology. As Glassnode succinctly framed it, the $111K–$117K corridor “defines the current battleground between recent buyers and profit-takers.” When that corridor finally breaks, it won’t be just another technical event—it will mark the moment one side’s narrative overpowered the other’s, setting the tempo for Bitcoin’s next major act.