Bitcoin rally shows signs of cooling even as a 'bull score' gauge nears its perfect score

A trend gauge is showing signs of a cooloff after bitcoin’s rally pushed it to just 10 points short of a perfect score.

Bitcoin rose 0.4% to just above $83,300 as of Wednesday Asian morning hours, down from an eight-month high near $87,400.

CryptoQuant, an onchain analysis firm, pegs its Bull Score at 90 out of 100. The score rolls onchain and market indicators into a single reading, and it jumped after bitcoin broke above its 365-day moving average last week, a break the firm treats as confirmation of a bull market.

The buying behind that move is already fading. CryptoQuant estimates spot demand has shrunk by about 170,000 $BTC over the past 30 days.

SOL and ZEC led the majors, each up nearly 2%, to about $119 and just above $1,400. XRP gained about 1% to just under $1.50, and ether, BNB and TRX each added less than 1%, CoinDesk data shows.

CryptoQuant measures demand by comparing newly mined bitcoin with changes in the pile of coins that haven’t moved for a year or more. That gauge, which it calls apparent demand, has been contracting all month. The market is absorbing fewer coins than are becoming available.

Futures demand is cooling faster. Growth in speculative futures demand dropped from about 164,000 $BTC on Sept. 14 to 16,000 $BTC on Sept. 29, a 90% drop in 15 days.

Recent buyers are sitting on an average unrealized profit of 33%, the widest since December 2024. They locked in gains on 25,700 $BTC on Sept. 22, the largest single day of profit-taking this year.

“Without fresh demand, rallies struggle to extend,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, wrote in the report. “With spot demand still in contraction and futures growth stalling, near-term upside becomes harder to sustain.”

Altcoin holders are moving coins onto exchanges too. CryptoQuant counted 76,000 altcoin deposits to exchanges over seven days, the most since October 2025, sent from 51,000 separate addresses. Coins sitting on an exchange can be sold in seconds, so that supply is now within easy reach of any bounce.

Bitcoin’s small gain came with a rebound across Asia. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.9%, with 10 of its 11 industry groups higher, and bonds steadied after a bruising selloff. SoftBank Group, an OpenAI investor, jumped more than 6% after Bloomberg reported that the AI startup is seeking at least $30 billion in fresh funding at a $1.4 trillion valuation. Equity-index futures pointed to gains in Europe and on Wall Street.

Traders are waiting on a key U.S. inflation reading later in the day for clues on where interest rates go next. A high print tends to raise the odds of a hike, which lifts the dollar and weighs on risk assets like bitcoin, while a low one tilts the odds toward a cut and tends to help crypto.