Bitcoin rose 20% in April, surging from around $66,000 to a monthly high of $79,000. But according to the latest analysis from a cryptocurrency data firm,Crypto Quantthis rally may be built on sand.
The weekly report released by the company on Thursday showed that the overall price increase was driven by growing demand for perpetual futures—a form of leveraged speculative trading—while spot demand, which reflects actual coin accumulation by market buyers, remained in negative territory.
CryptoQuant’s “apparent demand” metric—which tracks the estimated change in on-chain spot buying activity over 30 days—never turned positive during the price [surge] in April.
The report suggests that this divergence is an important warning signal. Price increases driven by spot demand reflect genuine buyers taking delivery.BitcoinPrice rallies fueled by the futures market indicate traders using leverage to bet on price movements, without necessarily holding the underlying asset. When these futures positions are eventually closed, prices often decline—sometimes sharply.
This pattern is not unprecedented. Analysts at CryptoQuant have directly compared it to the early stages of the 2022 bear market, when nearly identical demand characteristics emerged: rising demand for perpetual futures alongside a simultaneous decline in spot apparent demand.
After this configuration, Bitcoin experienced a prolonged price decline lasting several months, ultimately resulting in a value drop of approximately 70% from its peak.
Bitcoin has begun to retreat from its April high, falling to around $76,400—a move the company says aligns with the historical vulnerability of futures-driven rallies lacking confirmation of spot demand.
More concerning, CryptoQuant’s proprietary Bullish Score Index—which combines on-chain and market indicators on a scale of 0 to 100—fell from 50 to 40 in April, dropping below the neutral threshold into what the company calls a bearish zone. The index briefly touched the neutral reading of 50 in mid-April but retreated amid peaks and troughs in speculative activity.
The company did not predict a complete market reversal, but its message was cautious: without demand shifting from negative to positive, any attempt to reclaim the $79,000 peak would lack the on-chain foundation needed for a sustained breakout.
Users on Myriad (a prediction market operated by...) decrypt that Dastan’s parent company remains bullish on Bitcoin’s short-term prospects and expects the price of Bitcoin to rise by £1 million. There is a more than 70% probability that the next move for this coin will be an increase to $84,000 rather than a drop to $55,000.