BTC Tests Key Support at $99K as Long-Term Holder Selling Continues

Crypto markets are mixed on Wednesday, Nov. 5, with most large-cap assets continuing to trade in the red, while Bitcoin dipped below $100,000 twice over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) is down 1.2% on the day and trading around $102,600 at press time.

Ethereum (ETH) is down the most among the top-20 large caps today, losing and trading around $3,335. XRP, BNB, TRON (TRX), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), and Chainlink (LINK) are flat or slightly in the green, while Hyperliquid’s HYPE fared better, up 8.8% today.

A glassnode analyst noted that they’re seeing “decent spike in realized loss,” suggesting some degree of capitulation among Bitcoin holders.

Glassnode analyst Chris Beamish wrote in an X post today: “still seeing lots of long-term holder selling, but will be interested to see if the selling persists at these levels.”

As glassnode explained in a Nov. 4 X post, a key level for Bitcoin is around $99,000, which has “historically provided support during pullbacks.”

Mark Hiriart, an executive at digital asset trading firm Zerocap, said in commentary shared with The Defiant that historically, November has been “BTC’s strongest month,” but this “healthy correction,” which brought BTC’s price down 10% from the $110,000 peak “aligns with patterns seen in prior cycles, where post-euphoria dips precede stronger legs up.”

Big Movers and Liquidations

Among the top-100 assets, decentralized perpetuals exchange Aster’s ASTER and Zcash (ZEC) are the biggest gainers today, both up around 15%.

For Aster, the price surge follows reports that its CEO announced plans to build a privacy‑focused public chain aimed at traders, with gas-free transactions.

Meanwhile, today’s biggest losers are DASH — one of yesterday’s top gainers — and Internet Computer (ICP), which lost 27% and 11% respectively. For DASH the fall marks a correction from the asset’s surge over the last week, and it’s still up over 110% on that timeframe, joining the broader privacy coin rally, as The Defiant previously reported.

Meanwhile, data from Coinglass shows that over $1.7 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, including $1.29 billion in longs and around $403 million in shorts. Ethereum accounted for $575 million of that total, followed by Bitcoin at $485 million, and MMT with $134 million.

ETFs and Market Sentiment

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, spot Ethereum ETFs recorded their fifth consecutive day of outflows, with $219 million in net outflows, bringing total net assets to $21.1 billion. Spot Bitcoin ETFs also continued their net outflows with over $577 million leaving the products, according to SoSoValue.

On the macroeconomic front, U.S. private companies added 42,000 positions in October, rebounding from a 29,000 drop in September and beating the expected 22,000 gain, CNBC reported today.

All the growth came from larger companies with 250+ employees, which added 76,000 jobs, while smaller businesses cut 34,000.

At the same time, the number of job openings in the U.S. fell to their lowest level in over four and a half years as October ended, with the government shutdown continuing, according to data from job site Indeed.

In DeFi, sentiment continues to be bleak this week, as news of the Balancer hack and the collapse of yield optimizer Stream Finance shake confidence in the sector.

Per the crypto market Fear & Greed Index, sentiment has shifted to extreme fear over the past two days.