Is a $50,000 Bitcoin Crash Coming? Analysts Think So—Here’s Why

On-chain data shows Bitcoin short-term holders have transferred a large amount of BTC at a loss to exchanges, a sign of another capitulation wave on the network.

Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Are Depositing To Exchanges At Loss

As explained by CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn in a new post on X, short-term holders (STHs) have just made another wave of underwater exchange deposits.

The STHs refer to the investors who purchased their Bitcoin during the past 155 days. This cohort is generally considered to include the weak hands of the market, who easily sell at the sight of market volatility.

Recently, the market has been witnessing a bearish shift, which is exactly the type of event that STHs would be expected to react to. There are several ways to track the moves being made by these investors, with one such being the data of their exchange inflow transactions.

Usually, the STHs transfer their coins to centralized exchanges when they are looking to sell, so a spike in exchange deposits from the group can be a sign of a selloff.

During downtrends, loss selling is the most common type of distribution from the STHs due to the fact that their cost basis is at recent prices, which tend to be higher in bearish phases.

Now, here is the chart shared by Maartunn that shows the trend in the 24-hour loss exchange inflows made by the STHs over the past month:

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin STHs made a large amount of loss deposits to exchanges when the cryptocurrency’s price crashed to $94,000 last week. The same appears to have followed during the latest downward move in the asset.

In total, STHs have sent 65,200 underwater tokens to the exchanges over the last 24 hours. At the current exchange rate, this amount is worth a whopping $6.08 billion.

This new wave of capitulation wave in the STHs came as BTC dropped toward $89,000. Interestingly, what has followed this FUD from the STHs has so far been a rebound for the asset.

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode has also shared data related to the STH capitulation in a new X post.

Glassnode’s chart is for the amount of loss that the STHs as a whole are realizing through their transactions across the network. The 7-day exponential moving average (EMA) value of this metric is currently sitting at $427 million, which is the highest that it has been since November 2022, when the last bear market bottomed out.

“Panic selling is elevated & clearly rising, now exceeding the loss levels seen at the last two major lows of this cycle,” noted the analytics firm.

BTC Price

Bitcoin witnessed a bounce back to $92,800 during the past day.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz and RippleX researcher J. Ayo Akinyele have shared new updates on how the XRP Ledger (XRPL) could evolve in the coming years. Their comments show that developers are now focusing on long-term changes to the network, especially as DeFi usage grows and programmability moves closer to becoming a built-in feature.

XRP’s Expanding Role in Finance

Both Schwartz and Akinyele highlight how much the XRPL has evolved since its launch in 2012. It started as a network built for fast, low-cost payments, but today it has become a key layer for broader financial use. XRP now helps settle tokenized assets, provides liquidity across markets, and enables instant value transfer between different financial systems.

Akinyele notes that XRP is also being prepared for advanced institutional use cases, including asset-backed digital Treasury products and new types of digital ETFs. The launch of the first XRP ETF by Canary is a major step and shows growing interest from institutions.

XRP is also gaining visibility in the DeFi space. Projects like Flare, Axelar, Doppler, and MoreMarkets have already integrated XRP, showing that the asset is becoming more useful across both retail and institutional environments.

The Growing Talk Around Staking

As programmability becomes a more serious topic, Akinyele has introduced the idea of adding native staking to the XRPL. In simple terms, staking would allow users to lock XRP to support network functions and earn rewards.

However, this brings major design challenges. Today, the XRPL burns transaction fees instead of redistributing them. Validators build trust through performance, not financial stake. Adding staking would require creating a reward system, rethinking how fees flow through the network, and ensuring rewards stay fair and sustainable without slowing the system down.

Schwartz says his views on governance have evolved as XRP’s role in DeFi grows. With new features coming, he believes it is the right time to explore how the XRPL can expand carefully and responsibly.

Community Response

The idea of staking sparked mixed reactions. Some users argued that staking is usually linked to proof-of-stake blockchains and may not fit the XRPL’s design. Schwartz explained two advanced, long-term concepts: a two-layer validator model with incentives, and a system where transaction fees pay for zero-knowledge proofs to reduce the workload on nodes.

While many found the ideas interesting, others raised concerns about incentives, validator competition, and how fees would work. Some noted that the XRPL’s current fee-burning system avoids many of the issues seen in proof-of-stake networks.

Overall, the community showed interest in new features but also stressed the importance of protecting the simplicity, fairness, and efficiency that have defined the XRPL for more than a decade.

FAQs

Developers are expanding XRPL’s programmability and DeFi support, aiming to serve both retail users and institutional finance needs.

XRP is now used for asset-backed products, digital ETFs, and cross-market liquidity, making it valuable to banks and financial institutions.

Native staking is being discussed, which could let users lock XRP to support network functions and earn rewards, but design challenges remain.

XRPL’s ecosystem is maturing. Apart from payments, XRP is starting to support tokenized assets, ETFs, and other financial instruments, which potentially opens the door to additional decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities.

Ripple chief executive officer Garlinghouse recently took to the X social media network to ask about new uses for XRP as DeFi grows.

"With new DeFi protocols and apps emerging for XRP, what other possibilities for the network should be discussed?" the executive asked his followers.

Staking for XRPL?

J. Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, recently stirred up a lively discussion revolving around the network's future.

XRPL’s original purpose was to move value efficiently, but it has evolved to handle tokenized assets, real-time liquidity between markets

Moreover, XRP Spot ETFs (like Canary) are live, and more are coming, signaling institutional adoption.

Hence, the question is whether or not XRPL could possibly support native staking. 

Staking typically incentivizes validators in PoS chains. XRPL is different, so staking would require careful design to align with its principles.

There are multiple challenges, including a need for a source of rewards and, fair distribution mechanism. It also must preserve low fees, speed, and validator equality

Schwartz’s evolving vision

As reported by U.Today, David Schwartz, Ripple CTO, has also been thinking about XRPL’s next steps:

According to Schwartz, any DeFi or staking implementation must not compromise speed, low cost, or trust-based governance. 

He has proposed a two-layer consensus model (the inner layer for handling frequent ledger updates) and the outer layer (for handling governance and amendments). 

Bitcoin experienced significant competition between bulls and bears during the previous trading day, preventing an extended pullback to $86,000 or lower. In the short term, the Bitcoin bulls appear to have gained strength as they defended an important support zone. With this, the bearish action over the token has been delayed but has not faded to a large extent. In the wider perspective, the BTC price appears to be undergoing an inverse parabolic wave, which raises concerns over the next price action. 

Bitcoin Price Today-How Much is 1 BTC Selling for Today?

After a brief rebound, the Bitcoin price is trading around $91,469 with a minor rise of over 1.28% in the past 24 hours. The market capitalisation of the token has hit $1.82 trillion, with the volume plunging by 18% to reach $86 billion. The 24-hour high of BTC price is around $93,745, while the lows are around $89,300. This suggests the volatility of the token is on the rise, with price variations of nearly 7% to 8% in a day. Despite this, the bullish sentiment for the token is 82% while the fear and greed index remains at 16, suggesting extreme fear. 

Are Investors Bullish on Bitcoin Today?

Since the start of the month, the trading volume has been on the rise, which suggests the market participants are quite active. They are trying to lock a deal on all the BTC price moves, regardless of whether they are bullish or bearish. The volume surges above $120 billion as the price makes an intraday low, hinting towards the rise in the opportunity-driven mindset, and hence this is expected to keep the investors on their toes. Currently, the volume has cooled a bit, suggesting they are waiting for the price to enter the buy zone, probably below $90,000 and accumulate. Therefore, yes, Investors are bullish on the BTC price today. 

Bitcoin Price Analysis—Can it Defend the $91K Support Zone?

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott says he’s looking to mark up a crypto market structure bill next month to have it on President Donald Trump’s desk by early next year.

Scott told Fox Business on Tuesday that the committee has been negotiating with Democrats to reach a deal, but accused the party’s senators of stalling.

“Next month, we believe we can mark up in both committees and get this to the floor of the Senate early next year so that President Trump will sign the legislation making America the crypto capital of the world,” Scott said.