Bitcoin climbed 20% in April, surging from roughly $66,000 to a monthly peak of $79,000. But according to new analysis from crypto data firm CryptoQuant, the rally may have been built on sand.
The firm's weekly report, released Thursday, found that the entire price advance was driven by growth in perpetual futures demand—a form of leveraged, speculative trading—while spot demand, which reflects genuine coin accumulation by buyers in the market, remained in negative territory throughout.
CryptoQuant's "apparent demand" metric, which tracks the 30-day change in estimated on-chain spot buying activity, never turned positive during April's price surge.
That divergence, the report argues, is a meaningful warning sign. Rallies grounded in spot demand reflect real buyers taking delivery of Bitcoin; rallies grounded in futures reflect traders placing leveraged bets on price direction without necessarily holding the underlying asset. When futures positioning eventually unwinds, prices tend to fall—sometimes sharply.
The pattern is not without historical precedent. CryptoQuant's analysts draw a direct comparison to the onset of the 2022 bear market, when an almost identical demand signature emerged: perpetual futures demand rose while spot apparent demand contracted simultaneously.
That configuration preceded a sustained, multi-month price collapse that would eventually see Bitcoin lose roughly 70% of its value from its peak.
Bitcoin has already begun to pull back from its April high, sliding to around $76,400—a move the firm describes as consistent with the historical fragility of futures-led rallies that lack spot-demand confirmation.
Compounding the concern, CryptoQuant's proprietary Bull Score Index—a composite of on-chain and market indicators rated on a scale of zero to 100—declined from 50 to 40 during April, falling back below the neutral threshold into what the firm characterizes as bearish territory. The index had briefly reached 50, a neutral reading, in mid-April, only to retreat as speculative activity peaked and faded.
The firm stopped short of predicting a full market reversal, but the message was cautious: Without a shift in apparent demand from negative to positive, any renewed attempt to reclaim the $79,000 peak would lack the on-chain foundation required for a durable breakout.
Users on Myriad—a prediction market operated by Decrypt's parent company, Dastan—remain bullish on Bitcoin's short-term prospects, penciling in a more than 70% chance than the coin's next move is a rise to $84,000 rather than a plunge to $55,000.
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