Bitcoin HODLers Lead $1.35 Billion Capitulation: Glassnode
Glassnode has highlighted how the latest Bitcoin crash triggered a $1.35 billion capitulation event, with long-term holders contributing the majority.
Bitcoin Realized Loss Has Witnessed A Spike Recently
In its latest weekly report, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has discussed about the loss-taking panic that has accompanied the latest drawdown in the Bitcoin price. The indicator of relevance here is the Realized Loss, which measures, as its name suggests, the total amount of loss that BTC investors are realizing through their transactions every day.
Below is the chart shared by Glassnode that shows the trend in this metric for Bitcoin over the past year.
Looks like the value of the metric has shot up in recent days | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 22, 2026
From the graph, it’s visible that the Bitcoin Realized Loss has witnessed a sharp surge alongside the BTC price crash, indicating that investors have panic-exited the market at loss.
This isn’t anything unusual as capitulation tends to be a feature whenever the price goes down with a steep move; it’s apparent in the chart that the Realized Loss also spiked during the November and February crashes.
Compared to these two previous capitulation events, however, there are a couple of differences. The first and obvious one is the scale involved: the last two events saw loss-taking of a significantly higher level. This is naturally down to the fact that they involved price drawdowns of a larger degree.
The other difference is in the holder distribution. The last two capitulation events were dominated by short-term holders (STHs), investors who purchased their coins within the past 155 days.
These new market entrants also contributed to the latest event, but they didn’t account for the majority of the loss realization. Instead, long-term holders (LTHs) were the Bitcoin cohort driving the capitulation this time. These were the investors who bought prior to January 2026, at the highs of the 2025 bull market.
In total, the latest Realized Loss spike saw the indicator hit a value of $1.35 billion per day. Out of this, LTHs were responsible for $770 million of the daily loss-taking.
The analytics firm explained:
As the bear market matures, this pattern of long-term holder capitulation passing supply into new hands at lower prices is a recurring and necessary feature of cycle bottoming processes, though the current pace of loss realization suggests that process remains incomplete.
Another metric discussed by Glassnode in the report is the amount of liquidations in the futures market. The price plunge naturally caught out a large number of derivatives market traders, leading to a significant amount of long liquidations.
The trend in the BTC futures market liquidations over the past year | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 22, 2025
“Historically, large-scale long liquidations have coincided with local exhaustion points, as forced selling pressure cascades through derivatives markets and clears out weaker hands,” noted the analytics firm.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $65,500, down over 12% in the last seven days.
The price of the coin seems to have declined recently | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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