Last week, Bitcoin (BTC) briefly surpassed the $97,000 price mark on January 14, igniting hopes within the crypto community for an imminent ascent to the much-anticipated $100,000 level. This optimism was fueled by the fact that U.S. spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) linked to BTC recorded their largest daily inflows in three months on the same day.
According to the on-chain analytics platform SoSoValue, these inflows reached $843.62 million on January 14.
Previously, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had experienced a net inflow of $875.61 million on October 7, 2025. This figure was only surpassed days before the flash crash that occurred on October 10. Therefore, the expectation for Bitcoin to reach $100,000 was not unreasonable.
However, this optimism proved to be short-lived. Bitcoin failed to sustain its gains and subsequently fell to a low of $92,263.02 on January 19. One analyst attributes this decline to selling pressure exerted by American whales.
Analyst Identifies "Strongest" Selling Premium
On January 19, an analyst utilizing the on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant identified what they described as the "strongest" Bitcoin selling premium in recent periods. This observation coincided with a dip in the Coinbase Premium Gap (CPG) over the weekend.
The CPG is a metric that tracks the price difference between Bitcoin's USD pair on Coinbase and its USDT pair on Binance. Data from Coinbase, which is the largest cryptocurrency trading exchange, is indicative of U.S. trading activity. Conversely, data from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, reflects global trading activity.
A positive price difference generally indicates stronger U.S. buying demand. However, when the price difference turns negative, it signifies that Bitcoin is trading at a lower price on Coinbase compared to Binance. This scenario suggests that U.S. traders are selling more aggressively than their global counterparts.
This conclusion aligns with the findings of the CryptoQuant analyst, who reached a similar assessment by analyzing the CPG data. The analyst highlighted that the observed selling pressure indicated that American whales, or large Bitcoin holders, had been selling their holdings while the ETF market, which operates on traditional stock exchanges like Nasdaq, was closed over the weekend.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $93,024.73, marking a decline of over 2% in the preceding 24 hours.