Bitcoin sell-off next? Binance BTC balance shoots up $1.5B in one month

Bitcoin (BTC $29,281) traders may be gearing up for a sell-off as data shows tens of thousands of coins moving to exchanges.

The latest figures from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass confirm that global trading volume leader Binance’s BTC balance rose by over 50,000 BTC ($1.5 billion) in the past 30 days.

Binance takes lion’s share of exchange BTC balance increase

With BTC/USD setting multimonth highs regularly since mid-March, the temptation to sell for both long-term and short-term holders has undoubtedly increased.

As Cointelegraph reported, actual selling pressure has thus far remained muted by historical standards, but on-chain data suggests this could easily change.

According to Coinglass, Binance alone now has 51,000 BTC more on its books than 30 days ago. Compared with March 10, when BTC/USD briefly challenged $20,000 support, its balance is up by almost 100,000 BTC, separate data from analytics platform CryptoQuant confirms.

Binance BTC balance vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: CryptoQuant

As large as those numbers seem, the past week dwarfs the rate at which funds have entered the exchange’s wallets, with the balance tallying up 22,000 BTC in the past seven days alone.

Binance, with the largest trading volume of any exchange — the past 24 hours alone saw over $10 billion — is an outlier. Other major exchanges have, in fact, lost BTC or seen insignificant balance increases.

Aggregate increases over 30 days to April 28, thus totaling around 14,000 BTC, with the combined total holdings of the exchanges tracked by Coinglass now at 1.919 million BTC.

Bitcoin exchange BTC balance vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: Coinglass

Bears bet on $30,000 BTC price ceiling

Investor habits witnessed in recent weeks arguably increase pressure on bulls to flip $30,000 to support and continue rising.

The area around that level is the site of record historical transaction volume, making the significance of $30,000 more than just psychological.

The current state of liquidity across exchanges tracked by the trading suite DecenTrader shows that $35,000 is a key zone for liquidating leveraged BTC short positions.

BTC/USD liquidity map (screenshot). Source: DecenTrader

In part of ongoing market analysis, DecenTrader noted that despite BTC/USD recovering from local lows to trade near $29,500 on the day, bets on $30,000 remained out of reach as support continued to pile up.

“Long Short ratio now showing that there are more shorts than longs,” it summarized to Twitter followers.

This is at the same time as we’ve seen nearly $1 billion in Open Interest return, suggesting a lot of people are shorting the $30k resistance.

Bitcoin long/short ratio chart. Source: Decentrader/ Twitter