According to market observers, market structure tells a more complex story than price alone.
Amid Bitcoin’s rally, buyers are becoming more active, and structural support from ETFs remains intact, but much of the recent activity is being driven by leveraged futures traders rather than purely spot demand. This makes the recovery more vulnerable to macro disappointment, especially given the inflation data.
Singapore-based market maker Nflux said in a note to CoinDesk that ETF demand and low exchange reserves are helping to create a structural floor for BTC, while Glassnode’s market indicators in its most recent weekly report show buyers are becoming more aggressive in both the spot and perpetual markets.
The problem is that the reform is not neat. Momentum has slowed, leverage has increased, and funding is showing more short-term demand, suggesting traders are still hedging against the rally rather than fully embracing it.
This leaves Bitcoin in a strange middle ground. BTC is up 13.4% over the past 30 days and remains above $81,000, but Friday’s reaction to the stronger-than-expected jobs report – the strong number means the Fed is less likely to cut rates – shows how sensitive the market is to recent buyer cost bases. The headline numbers beat consensus, yet BTC fell from nearly $82,000 to $79,743 before recovering over the weekend.
Enflux wrote, “A headline beat should have clearly cleared $80,700, but the spot came back first.” “That level is actual overhead, not just a chart marker.”
If risk appetite is coming back, why hasn’t BTC moved more solidly? Enflux points to an unusual comparison point, arguing that the recovering luxury watch market could offer early insight into how wealthy investors are behaving.
Citing Morgan Stanley’s latest Secondary Watch data, the firm noted that prices rose 1.9% in the first quarter, with gains spread across 25 of 35 tracked brands due to improvement in price retention and inventory turnover. The broader conclusion is not that crypto money is flowing into watches, but rather that affluent buyers are reengaging with riskier assets, where pricing, scarcity and demand fall easier after a long correction.
This creates an uncomfortable paradox for Bitcoin: if high-end risk appetite is waning, BTC’s ongoing struggle to decisively break key resistance suggests that the crypto has yet to become a clear expression of that returning confidence.
Trading data from Glassnode shows that buyers are becoming more aggressive, but not in a way that can fully resolve the question of conviction. A key measurement is the cumulative volume delta or CVD, which tracks whether traders are more aggressively buying at market prices or selling at bids.
In simple terms, it helps show who is moving the market. Glassnode said spot CVD, which reflects activity in the underlying Bitcoin market, increased 46.4% to $62.0 million from $42.4 million, indicating buyers are willing to pay up rather than wait for cheaper entry points.
Perpetual CVD, the same measure applied to crypto futures, increased by $110.0 million to $410.3 million, suggesting that leveraged traders are also leaning more bullish. This may accelerate profits, but it is a less durable signal than spot demand as futures positions can quickly reverse if prices change. Caution signs are equally important.
Market observers say Bitcoin’s floor is stronger than it was a month ago, but the next move may depend less on crypto-native enthusiasm than on whether inflation data gives traders enough confidence to stop the rally and start chasing it.
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