Bitcoin’s Spot vs. Futures battle heats up, yet BTC could rally IF…

Key Takeaways

What signals highlight Bitcoin’s futures weakness?

Futures Pressure Index at 32.5 and Taker Buy/Sell Ratio near 0.89 showed persistent bearish positioning.

Where does BTC Spot strength appear?

Exchange Netflows stayed negative, Spot Delta hit 447 BTC, and Adler flagged $114.5k VWAP as critical support for continued consolidation.

Bitcoin [BTC] traded within a consolidation range of $113k and $117k over the past week.  In fact, at press time, BTC changed hands at $115,771, down 1.01% over 24 hours.

Amid this market slowdown, participants in the Futures markets turned extremely bearish. 

Futures market leans bearish

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler noted that Bitcoin’s Futures Pressure Index fell to 32.5, near quarterly extremes of bearish pressure.

Source: CryptoQuant

Such extremely low levels implied that most leverage heavily leaned bearish, with a lot of short positions or aggressive selling in the Futures.

Futures Taker CVD data confirmed that sellers dominated the 90-day cumulative flows.

Source: CryptoQuant

The Taker Buy/Sell Ratio held below 1.0 for most of the past week, last printing 0.89, at the time of writing. It only crossed above one twice, reflecting persistent selling in the derivatives market.

Normally, such pressure could weigh further on prices.

Source: CryptoQuant

Spot demand absorbs selling

Despite the futures-driven sell pressure, the Spot markets held up firmly, suggesting that organic demand had actively absorbed selling pressure. 

At press time, Bitcoin’s Spot Buy Volume was 1.68k BTC, compared to 1.23k BTC in Sell Volume. As a result, the king crypto saw a positive Delta of 447 BTC, indicating a higher buying pressure. 

Source: Coinalyze

Exchange Netflows backed this signal.

Netflows stayed negative across the past week, with a fresh outflow of 577 BTC on the 19th of September after the previous day’s –18.4k BTC.

Source: CryptoQuant

Persistent outflows pointed to ongoing accumulation by buyers.

VWAP holds key support

According to AMBCrypto’s analysis, Bitcoin remained stuck within a consolidation range as bears in the futures and bulls in the spot fight for market control.

In fact, Adler observed that sellers’ waves were absorbed near the 14-day VWAP at $114,500, which acted as dynamic support. A loss of this level could expose BTC to $112,693.

On the other hand, if bears in the Future slow down, BTC could breach $117.9k resistance and eye $119,347.

However, if the prevailing market conditions persist, the market can see continued consolidation as long as BTC holds above $114.5k, cited by Adler.