Bitcoin Holders Have Been Underwater For Six Weeks – But One Analyst Says $45K Is Unlikely

• Bitcoin’s Adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss has been negative since early June, according to analyst Axel Adler Jr.
• Short-term, long-term, and aggregate holder groups converged on a similar reading, a parallel, Adler said, that indicated broad rather than concentrated market stress.
• However, analyst James Check said the consensus among traders and analysts was that Bitcoin’s low would be in the mid-to-low $40,000s, a scenario he said wasn't his base case.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) active holders have remained in aggregate unrealized losses for six weeks, according to on-chain data, highlighting the broadest stretch of market stress in this cycle. However, analysts are divided on how much further the bear market has to go, with one pushing back against what he has called a market consensus for a bottom in the mid-to-low $40,000s.

Bitcoin’s Adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) has been in the red for over a month now, with 44 out of the last 60 days closed below zero, CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said in a newsletter on Tuesday.

Adjusted NUPL measures whether active Bitcoin holders are sitting on aggregate unrealized profits or losses, excluding long-dormant coins to better reflect current market sentiment.

On-Chain Data Shows Broad Holder Stress

The analyst pointed out that the metric hit its low of -0.22 on Jun. 30, when Bitcoin was trading near its local bottom, and has since recovered amid sideways price action, narrowing the depth of unrealized losses without returning to break-even.

The move lower was bottomed by short-term holders, who bottomed at -0.27 on 6 Jun before recovering fastest. The long-term holders moved from roughly +0.13 two months ago to roughly -0.14, the first time in this cycle that the market’s most resilient cohort has entered unrealized losses, Adler said. By mid-July, all three readings, short-term, long-term, and aggregate, had tightened into a narrow band around -0.13, leaving all holders in the red.

The Case Against $40,000s

Previous bear markets bottomed below Bitcoin’s Realized Price, another cost-basis metric currently sitting at $53,000-$56,000. Check said that he expects the pattern to break this cycle, claiming the Realized Price calculation underestimates the market’s actual pain threshold because it is skewed by large unrealized profits held in lost or dormant coins.

On-chain analyst James Check, known online as Checkmatey, said in his own newsletter on Tuesday that he has read "at least half a dozen bear market reports" over the past months that converged on a similar outlook that Bitcoin's bottom was far off, with a final low expected somewhere in the mid-to-low $40,000s. However, that was not his base case, he said.

His thesis was based on Bitcoin’s True Market Mean, a price model he said was the average cost basis of active investors and had traded between $76,000 and $78,000 since February 2026, closely tracking both Bitcoin ETF inflow cost basis near $80,000 and Strategy’s (MSTR) cost basis near $76,000.

Bitcoin Drop To $45,000 Would Be Shallowest Bear Ever, Analyst Says

Check explained what a drop to $45,000 would indicate. Bitcoin is down 54% versus 75%-85% in prior bear markets, a fact investor Mark Yusko had also previously pointed out. According to Check, $45,000 would be only 64% down, the lowest ever. 

Unrealized losses are 18% of market cap, said Check, which is far below the 60%+ at previous bottoms. A $45,000 drop would mean 59% of supply would be underwater, the highest since 2018, said the analyst. His Mean Reversion Index would hit quantile 2.6, a level not seen since 2011 and 2015. Check wrote that he called $50,000 a more plausible bottom, although he said, “I just can’t make myself believe it makes a lot of sense.”

Bitcoin’s price was trading around $62,743, down 0.8% in the last 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘Bearish’ zone, while chatter stayed ‘low’ over the past day.

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