Bitcoin at $73,500: 14 billion stablecoins evaporated, the fuel for the rebound is missing

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Behind these shocks, a figure goes almost unnoticed. The supply of stablecoins has fallen by $14.2 billion in thirty days, something not seen since the 2022 bear market.

Stablecoins are tokenized dollars that wait on exchange platforms before being converted into bitcoin or ether. Their outstanding balance grows when new money arrives and shrinks when investors repatriate their money to the bank. And it shrinks. According to Glassnode's weekly report relayed by The Block on November 11, the supply of stablecoins fell by $14.2 billion over the thirty days ended November 9. The total falls just below $280 billion, a September 2025 level.

The last contraction of this magnitude dates back to June 2022, when Terra then Celsius collapsed and the drop over thirty days had approached 30 billion. Bitcoin was then worth $20,000 and would reach $15,500 in November. USDT carries most of the movement. CryptoQuant estimates the loss of capitalization of the Tether token at $6.6 billion over the sixty days to November 7, more than double the $3.2 billion observed after the bankruptcy of FTX. Glassnode summarizes the situation with a formula, “less fuel for a rally”.

On the Wall Street side, the tap remains closed. US spot Bitcoin ETFs returned $95 million on Tuesday according to SoSoValue, the fourth consecutive outflow session. BlackRock's IBIT concentrates 78 million and aligns eight days of net redemptions, after a week from November 3 to 7 already closed at 1.28 billion dollars in withdrawals. October’s inflation didn’t help matters. The price index (CPI) came out at +0.4% over one month against 0.3% expected, and CME futures now give a 90% probability of a Fed rate hike on December 8 and 9.

The on-chain signal is worse. Short-term holders (less than 155 days of holding) are throwing in the towel. CryptoQuant counted approximately 47,300 BTC deposited on exchanges at a loss in twenty-four hours, compared to 1,100 BTC deposited in gain. Or $3.6 billion in forced sales. “Approximately 27 BTC arrive at a loss for every 1 BTC transferred into profit,” writes analyst Amr Taha. Nothing surprising. Glassnode places the average purchase price of this cohort at around $75,600, or $2,000 above the current price.

The options market turned upside down in a week. At Derive, the implied probability of bitcoin below $70,000 by Christmas rose from 15% to 31%, while that of a close above $80,000 fell from 53% to 26%. Puts (sell options) now represent 55% of premiums paid on the platform, compared to 36% a week earlier.

The lever did not deflate. Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33, notes that open interest on perpetual contracts reached 353,000 BTC, up 12% over thirty days while the price lost 10%. “A breakout could trigger massive liquidations of long positions, and a rebound could fuel a wave of buybacks of shorts,” he warns in the note cited by The Block. Bitcoin sticks to the Nasdaq like rarely, with a thirty-day correlation of 0.75. K33 reviewed sixteen scoring rebounds from Nasdaq. Of the seven that failed, BTC fell each time, by a median of 21% over the following twenty days.

Everything is not dark. Glassnode observes that wallets holding between 100 and 10,000 BTC are starting to accumulate again. The $73,000 support, monitored since the breakout of 75,000 on November 6, fell to $72,700 on Tuesday before being recaptured, and the night's low stopped at $73,366. The next important meeting is that of the Fed on December 8 and 9, and until then, the first sign of new money to watch will be a supply of stablecoins which begins to grow again.

Falling down the white rabbit hole in 2017, I went from avid reader to Editor-in-Chief of Journal du Coin. I like to get involved behind the scenes of projects to bring my vision of a decentralized future. A lover of beautiful letters, I coordinate our teams to transform technical complexity into human, precise information without unnecessary jargon. Between entrepreneurship and writing, my mission is clear: popularize tomorrow, but do it today.

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