The Week On-Chain 1, 2026
Bitcoin enters 2026 with a cleaner market structure after a major year-end reset. Profit-taking has eased, and risk appetite is cautiously rebuilding, but reclaiming key cost-basis levels remains critical for confirming sustained upside.

Executive Summary
- Bitcoin enters 2026 following a decisive drawdown and consolidation phase, with on-chain metrics indicating reduced profit-taking pressure and early signs of structural stabilization around the lower end of the current range.

- A large volume of overhead supply remains clustered across the upper range, continuing to cap breakout attempts and reinforcing the importance of key recovery thresholds being reclaimed before trend expansion can resume.

- Corporate treasury demand continues to provide stabilizing support beneath price but remains episodic rather than persistently structural.

- US spot ETF flows have begun to re-emerge following late-2025 outflows. At the same time, futures open interest has stabilized and is turning higher, reflecting early signs of renewed institutional participation and rebuilding derivatives engagement.

-The largest options open interest reset on record has cleared more than 45% of outstanding positioning, removing structural hedging constraints and providing a cleaner read on fresh risk expression.

- Implied volatility has likely bottomed, with early-year taker demand gently lifting the volatility surface while remaining near the lower bound of its recent range.

- Skew continues to normalize as put premia compress and call participation rises, while new-year options flows tilt increasingly toward calls, signalling a rotation away from defensive hedging toward upside participation.

- Dealer gamma has flipped short between $95K–$104K, mechanically reinforcing upside price movement during strength, while call premium behaviour around the $95K strike suggests patience among upside participants with limited profit-taking.

- Collectively, the market is transitioning from defensive deleveraging into selective re-risking, beginning in 2026 with a cleaner structure and renewed optionality for expansion.


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🔄 Update:
With the spot price trading around $89.9K, the key on-chain price models have now shifted slightly:
🔴 STH Cost Basis: $98.9K
--- Spot Price: $89.9K ---
🟡 Active Investors Mean: $87.7k
🟢True Market Mean: $81.0K
🔵 Realized Price: $56.2K

📊 http://glassno.de/3XDy2xe

Long-term $BTC holder distribution has decelerated. Net outflows have rolled over from extreme levels, indicating that the market is progressively absorbing long-held supply and that a large portion of overhead supply may now be largely worked through.
📈 glassno.de/3ZdVEct

As Long-Term Holders (LTHs) transition from a high-spending regime in H2 2025 to lower spending in Jan 2026, their profit-taking volumes have cooled to levels typically observed in shallow bear phases.

Such conditions are often associated with heightened uncertainty and tend to emerge during mid-bull market pauses or the early stages of deeper bear markets.

📉 glassno.de/4pzkKgI

Using the newly launched Short-Term Holder Cost Basis Distribution (CBD) Heatmap, the recent $80K–$95K consolidation reflects a top-heavy cost-basis structure meeting renewed demand above $80K.
Overhead supply from recent buyers has absorbed bounce attempts, anchoring price despite sustained buying interest following the drawdown.
📉 glassno.de/4syBK9D

The Week On-Chain 2, 2026
Bitcoin has entered the new year with constructive momentum, posting two consecutive higher highs and extending price to $98k. This early-year advance, however, has carried price directly into a historically significant supply zone.

Executive Summary
- Bitcoin remains locked in a low-volatility consolidation regime, with compressed ranges masking rising underlying fragility and unresolved directional conviction.

- Options markets continue to price elevated downside convexity, signalling that tail-risk demand remains firm despite improving spot and derivatives positioning.

- Volatility risk is being deferred rather than resolved, leaving the market vulnerable to abrupt repricing once liquidity conditions shift.

- Institutional balance-sheet flows have stabilised following a full de-risking cycle, but accumulation remains uneven and event-driven rather than structurally persistent.

-Spot market behaviour has turned constructive, with Binance and aggregate exchange flows transitioning into buy-dominant regimes while Coinbase sell pressure has materially eased.

- The recent push into the $96K region was mechanically driven by a derivatives-led short squeeze on comparatively thin futures volume.

- Long-term holder distribution has slowed, with cost-basis clusters and confidence bands forming a developing structural price floor.

- Broader market direction remains increasingly dependent on liquidity conditions and derivatives positioning until persistent spot accumulation re-emerges.



Read more in The Week On-Chain

🔄 Update:
With the spot price surging to $97K, the key on-chain price models have now shifted slightly:

🔴 STH Cost Basis: $98.4K
--- Spot Price: $97K ---
🟡 Active Investors Mean: $87.8k
🟢True Market Mean: $81.1K
🔵 Realized Price: $56.2K

📊 http://glassno.de/3XDy2xe

Ethereum’s Month-over-Month Activity Retention shows a sharp spike in the “New” cohort, indicating a surge in first-time interacting addresses over the past 30 days.
This reflects a notable influx of new wallets engaging with the Ethereum network, rather than activity being driven solely by existing participants.
📈 http://glassno.de/3ZaUPRQ

The current market structure for XRP closely resembles that of February 2022.
Investors active over the 1W–1M window are now accumulating below the cost basis of the 6M–12M cohort.
As this structure persists, psychological pressure on top buyers continues to build over time.

📉glassno.de/3Nu6Vmu

STH-NUPL, which measures the unrealized profit or loss of new investors relative to STH-market cap, indicates new investors have been carrying net unrealized losses since November 2025.
A recovery above ~$98K appears to be the minimum threshold required to return this cohort to a net profitable state.

📉http://glassno.de/4jQjx3u