Bitcoin Price Drops 14% as Whales Sell, Is Bull Run Over?

Bitcoin price dropped 14% from its December 17 high of $108,353. This double-digit crash is the third liquidation event in December that wiped more than $1 billion worth of position. With such a steep decline and whales offloading their BTC holdings, is the bull run over? Let’s explore.

What Drives Bitcoin’s Sudden Drop?

The US Federal Reserve’s decision to have two rate cuts in 2025 as opposed to the expected four is the main driver of Bitcoin price’s recent collapse. On December 17, BTC’s value set up an ATH of $108,353, but closed the daily candlestick with a doji. A doji is a candlestick pattern with negligible or no body and long wick. Such technical formation often hints at trend exhaustion. Since ATH, Bitcoin has shed 14% and seems to be setting up a daily low of $92,232 as of Friday.

The hawkish comments from Fed coupled with overleveraged traders caused $844 million worth of longs and $166 million worth of shorts faced liquidation on December 19.

Whales That Bought BTC Before Bull Run Sell

According to the on-chain data provider Santiment, large transactions, ie., worth $100,000 or more, have risen. To be precise, large transfers worth $100K or more and $1million or more have spiked on November 22, December 5 and December 16. Bitcoin price saw steep double-digit corrections after these events, denoting that if whale transactions spike after a rallying it serves as a proxy of whales selling.

The Network Realized Profit/Loss (NPL) indicator further solidifies that there was indeed profit-taking. As the name indicates, a positive in this index denotes profit-taking and a downtick indicates capitulation. While the former serves as a sell signal, the latter indicates a buy signal.

This indicator also shows similar spikes on November 22, December 5 and 16, hinting that whales were actually booking profits.

With these metrics pointing to whales booking profits, speculators wonder, if the bull run is over. Let’s answer this question with Bitcoin price analysis.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: Is Bull Run over?

Bitcoin’s daily chart shows that bullish market structure, containing higher highs and higher lows, has been broken. As long as BTC reclaims the ATH of $108,353 and sets up a decisive daily candlestick close above it, the outlook remains bearish. So, technically, the bull run is not over yet. 

From a purely technical standpoint, even if Bitcoin price recovers from here with the intention to retain its bullish market structure, it will face two key hurdles. The first one is the $100,000 psychological level. A flip of this resistance into support level will put BTC in front of the daily imbalance, that extends from $102,747 to $105,363.

Overcoming these two hurdles will allow Bitcoin to set up a higher high above $108,353. Even after this outlook is achieved, the bulls need to defend and prevent a production of a low lower than $92,118. In such a case, the Bitcoin price forecast hints that the bull run will continue and potentially propel BTC to new highs. 

On the other hand, if Bitcoin price fails to overcome $100,000 or the aforementioned daily imbalance it would signal a lack of buying pressure. Under these conditions, if Bitcoin could dip below to $90,000 and revisit the $87,333 support level.