$BTC’s $85K Makeover Machine: 4M Coins Could Turn a Rally Into Exit Liquidity

About 4 million BTC held by Bitcoin’s long-term holders were purchased between $85,000 and $118,000, creating an unrealized-loss zone that could limit a recovery in $BTC, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. Most of those coins were acquired in 2025, and more than half of all long-term holder coins were bought above the current price. The block is worth about $326 billion at Bitcoin’s price of around $81,400, which was up 1.2% over the previous 24 hours but about 35% below its all-time high of $126,080.

Glassnode defines long-term holders as investors who have held coins for more than 155 days. The firm said a band between $84,000 and $85,000 has pushed Bitcoin back four times this year, while $BTC has closed above $85,000 on only five days since January, never for more than three consecutive days. Its latest peak above the level came in September, when Bitcoin reached $87,100. “$85K keeps turning $BTC back. Since January, Bitcoin has closed above it on only five days, never more than three in a row. It's a truly tough level to break,” Glassnode wrote in an October 28, 2026 Week on Chain post.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF holders are also close to break-even. Glassnode placed their average purchase price at $81,500, while Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart estimated it at just under $82,000 and said Bitcoin had hovered near that level since the end of August. Seyffart’s chart showed ETF holders with an average unrealized loss of about $2.63 billion as of Monday. He said the estimate tracks only fund flows and does not reflect the prices paid by secondary-market buyers.

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.75% to 4.00% on Wednesday in a 10-2 vote, with Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack dissenting in favor of a hike. Before the decision, traders had assigned more than a 70% probability to another quarter-point hike in December. HashKey senior researcher Tim Sun said the move had been priced in to a certain extent. “What truly constrains Bitcoin's performance,” he told Decrypt, “is the persistently high U.S. Treasury yields and real interest rates, which are significantly raising the opportunity cost for investors holding risk assets.”

The 10-year Treasury yield stood just under 5% at midday on Thursday, according to CNBC, down from 5.05% at Wednesday’s close and a 52-week high of 5.37% on October 7. Sun also said lower funding rates on Bitcoin perpetual futures have reduced returns on cash-and-carry arbitrage, which pairs spot Bitcoin with short futures. Galaxy Research found that nine hedge funds and banks cut 68,000 BTC worth of spot ETF exposure as the strategy waned, while wealth platforms and sovereign funds added to their positions.