Bitcoin (BTC) has been counting down to another bottom for almost two months, as the classic onchain metric suggests.

Key Points:

• BTC supply loss exceeded 50% for the first time during the bear market in early June.
• In previous bear markets, this event started the countdown to a recent macroeconomic bottom in BTC prices.
• Separate data shows that the “emotional premium” of the bull market has already passed.

The deduction of supply losses is already Bitcoin’s second longest

In his own Report summarizing the first half of 2026cryptocurrency research firm K33 Research has found that over 50% of the BTC supply is currently held at a loss.

A typical feature of a bear market, a loss of supply has become a measure of progress towards macro lows for BTC/USD.

K33 data shows that once the supply loss exceeds 50%, the bottom will occur no later than 101 days later. Bear markets offer different time frames, with the shortest lower “window” lasting just 13 days in 2022.

The 2018 bear market took 23 days to reach its low, while in 2014, Bitcoin fell for 101 days after reaching 50% of supply at a loss.

In 2026, supply at a loss repeated standard bear market behavior, exceeding 50% on June 5. 42 days have passed since then, making this year’s bitcoin low window the second longest on record.

BTC supply with a loss and days until the bear market (screenshot). Source: K33 Research

In an accompanying commentary, K33 noted that returns in the year following the phenomenon “tend to be very solid.”

Earlier this month, Axel Adler Jr., a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, estimated that the supply loss was in about two months from levels corresponding to the bottoms of the bear market.

CryptoQuant data results in a supply loss of 46% as of July 17.

“Capital distribution” teases the positive side

Moving on, CryptoQuant looked at what it described as “sparse” readings from models based on Bitcoin investors’ costs.

Related: Bitcoin buyers for 107 thousand dollars provide ‘early signals’ of 2026 bear market bottom: Glassnode

The realized capitalization variance (RCV) model, which measures the difference between realized capitalization and market capitalization, is currently in the lower 6% of its historical range.

“Rather than tracking price alone, it isolates the difference between realized and market cap against its own history, capturing how an investor’s cost basis has been stretched or compressed compared to its current valuation,” the Crazzyblockk specialist explained in his article QuickTake blog post on Thursday.

“When that variance boils down to a deeply negative Z-score, the emotional premium built during the rally has been largely priced in. The metric doesn’t read the narrative, only the distribution of capital.”

Bitcoin RCV data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant

At -2.35, the standardized RCV Z-score once again points to the end of the Bitcoin bear market.

“Every prior stretch in which the model spent extended periods of time below the -2.0 z-score, late 2018, mid-2022, and early 2015, preceded future twelve-month returns north of 75%,” the post noted.

“The most extreme reading in this data set, -4.68 in November 2018, landed almost exactly at the bottom of the Bitcoin cycle near $3,792.”