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It is believed that the Bitcoin market structure has modified massively because the significant price drop on October 10, 2025. While the leading cryptocurrency has been on a recovery path because the market bloodbath, some sectors imagine that bear season has already begun.
With BTC below its 2025 opening price, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make a positive case for the world's largest cryptocurrency. Additionally, an interesting data point has emerged a few relevant class of Bitcoin investors, further adding credibility to the beginning of a possible bear market.
Are Bitcoin financial firms moving their coins?
In a brand new post on This conclusion is predicated on the balance sheet growth of a gaggle of investors referred to as “dolphins.”
Dolphins are a gaggle of crypto investors who own significant amounts of a coin and classify them between small investors (shrimps) and huge investors (whales). Specifically, Moreno described dolphins as wallet addresses with significant BTC holdings between 100 and 1,000 coins.
According to the newest data from CryptoQuant, the expansion of the Dolphins' BTC holdings has slowed over the past 12 months and appears to be on a downward trend. Moreno believes that this negative change indicates the emergence of a Bitcoin bear market.
Source: @jjc_moreno on X
Moreno revealed that these Dolphin addresses were up about 965,000 BTC year-over-year because the BTC price reached its current all-time high of around $125,000. With the BTC price now almost 30% below its record high, the Bitcoin Dolphins account balance is around 694,000 coins.
Moreno wrote on X:
This cohort of addresses includes ETFs and treasury firms, which have also halted their purchases.
More interestingly, CryptoQuant's head of research revealed that this group of investors consists of ETF issuers and treasury corporations which have stopped buying Bitcoin. According to data from SoSoValue, US-based Bitcoin exchange-traded funds saw net outflows in five of the last six weeks.
Meanwhile, BTC and crypto treasury corporations have struggled in recent months, with retail investors losing tens of billions on the hype. While there have been rare reports of crypto treasuries selling off, this drop in these Dolphins' holdings tells a very different story.
Bitcoin price at a look
As of this writing, the value of BTC is around $89,151, reflecting a decline of over 3% within the last 24 hours.
The price of BTC within the each day time-frame | Source: BTCUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image created by Dall-E, chart by TradingView
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