Crypto trader Ansem said the market should not read 「$6 billion was stolen while Bitcoin fell only 2%」 as a bullish signal.
He said Bitcoin’s current trading structure is clearly different from what it was years ago, and a lack of an immediate downside reaction does not mean the broader decline cannot continue.
Bitcoin no longer sits at the center of retail leverage the way it did in 2017
According to Ansem, Bitcoin was still the main target for leveraged retail speculation in 2017. By 2020 and 2021, retail traders were taking on more risk through altcoins instead, while new traders on Uniswap showed limited interest in Bitcoin.
He added that after 2023, weak altcoin performance on centralized exchanges pushed more speculative activity on-chain, which helped make meme coins more popular. Now, stock perpetual contracts are also pulling away traders who might otherwise have used leverage to go long BTC.
In his view, those changes have affected Bitcoin’s price behavior.
Post-breakout price action looks different from earlier cycles
Ansem said that in 2017, Bitcoin often moved sharply higher after breaking above its previous all-time high. In parts of 2021 and 2023 to 2025, by contrast, the market more often saw marginal new highs followed by failed breakouts, or narrow trading ranges that lasted for months.
He cited the 「10·10」 liquidation event as an example. BTC fell less than altcoins at the time and continued to trade above $100,000 for weeks afterward, while altcoins were heavily hit within a single candle.
He said that pattern reflects the fact that higher-risk speculators are no longer concentrated in leveraged BTC longs.
Short-term resilience does not prove the downtrend is over
Ansem said sellers may now be more passive, and there may also be fewer speculators in the BTC market who are vulnerable to leveraged liquidations than in the past. Because of that, he said, short-term price resilience alone is not enough to conclude that the downtrend has ended.
