Bitcoin’s fall to around $60,000 in February was a one-day panic that people will remember as the bottom.
However, reading this washout more accurately is difficult and more informative. The cycle ended in stages and the sellers were replaced.
Checkonchain’s February 10 report framed the move as a rapid mass capitulation event with losses large enough to reset sentiment.
It also claims that the market had previously surrendered once, in November 2025, and that the identity of the seller was different in each act.
So if you really want to understand where the weakness was, you need to look past the most dramatic candlesticks and start considering who actually sold and why they had to sell.
Surrender simply means surrender.
What fuels the decline is panic selling, usually because investors decide they can’t afford another drop. In cryptocurrencies, that capitulation leaves a very visible footprint on-chain as realized losses.
Data suggests that what we saw in February was a flash that forced record losses. This also came after the first purge took place several months ago.
The numbers are straightforward: short-term holders lost about $1.14 billion in one day, while long-term holders lost about $225 million on the same day.
When losses are deducted against profit taking, the net realized loss rate in the heaviest window was approximately $1.5 billion per day. If we focus only on realized losses, we can treat November 2025 and February 2026 as separate capitulation events, each with daily realized losses exceeding $2 billion.
To illustrate the common frustrations of this cycle, it is helpful to think of it as two separate events.
Prices may appear stable but could collapse anyway, as the group that still holds the risk changes.
One cohort can tolerate drawdowns, while others cannot tolerate boredom, second-time failure, or the moment they realize their push-buy was just the first of many.
Act 1: Class of 2025 breaks through in November
The first capitulation occurred in November 2025, when Bitcoin fell to around $80,000.
Approximately 95% of the realized losses in the November event were accounted for by the “2025 class”, so it is reasonable to call this a capitulation.
The idea behind this cohort is both informative and interesting. Cohort here refers to a grouping of coins based on when they were acquired. Knowing when a coin was last moved on the chain gives us a time-stamped cost basis for that unit.
When you aggregate that across your network, you can talk about who’s in the water and who’s not. This same logic is behind the realized price, which is generally described as the average on-chain cost basis of coins in circulation.
The sellers in November were those who survived a year in which the market did not give them the clean solutions they expected.
The wording in the report is that they continued trading macroside for a year before giving up. It is a specific type of surrender that may be called fatigue.
This is the moment when time pain turns into price pain, as investors decide it’s better to be wrong and remain flat than right and stuck.
This is also why much of the discussion about market cycles misses the point here.
In previous bear markets, you could tell a decent story about one final flush that deleveraged and crushed the last believers.
This time, a lot of that work happened faster and more slowly due to the busyness of calendars that keep people from paying attention.
The report even floats the idea that the long lateral stretch in 2025 should also be counted as part of the bear period. Researchers argue that menstruation causes pain in advance, loading the springs for early vomiting.
You don’t necessarily have to agree with it to get the point across. The seller was already prepared.
Act 2: February beats the bullshit and drags the rest down.
February was the second act and had a very different emotional profile than the previous ones.
Bitcoin hit a low of around $60,000, and the seller map changed to be almost evenly split between 2025 and 2026 graduates. In other words, the new buyer became the seller.
According to the data, the buyers in 2026 were those who bought into the $80,000 to $98,000 bear flag zone thinking they were buying at the bottom. It is a surrender of shattered confidence.
The rest of the 2025 cohort likely sold because they regretted not selling for $80,000 and decided to sell for $60,000 instead.
It’s an ugly but realistic pattern of behavior.
Just because people are depressed doesn’t mean they can sell. They sell because they have held out an opportunity to avoid risk, and because the previous mistake of not selling during the second crash is felt permanently. This is where the “two surrenders” framework comes into play.
There were almost 1 class of sellers in November.
In February, the market had to clear two classes at once. Owners are tired from last year and new push buyers who know they’re fast.
This combination is why the realized losses are so high and the emotional atmosphere so dark.
The report calls February’s surge in realized losses the largest realized loss event in history in absolute dollar terms. Net realized loss flows during the flash period were approximately $1.5 billion per day as losses soared while profit taking was subdued.
This ratio is more important than the price of raw materials. This is because it shows that this was no ordinary redistribution. People pressed the eject button all at once.
The other thing is that the flash didn’t happen quietly.
Spot, ETF, futures and options volume soared.
Total spot trading volume was approximately $15.4 billion per day, and weekly ETF trading volume reached an all-time high of approximately $45.6 billion.
Futures trading volume soared from about $62 billion to more than $107 billion per day. Options trading volume has doubled since January to about $12 billion per day, about half of which is related to IBIT options. This has surpassed Deribit by about $4 billion per day.
This type of volume spike is important because capitulation must be traded.
These are collective debates about value, with forced sells on the one hand and high-conviction purchases on the other.
And in February, that discussion occurred simultaneously in all venues.
Since the cost base is a band, the bottom is a band.
There’s a temptation, especially after a dramatic turn, to turn the entire episode into a discussion about a single number.
Was $60,000 the bottom, yes or no?
But there’s a better way to think about it. The bottom is a process that unfolds on a cost basis, not a moment when candlesticks appear because they look dramatic.
You can pin that process to two reference levels.
One is the realized price, which the report puts at about $55,000. The realized price is the average cost basis of the network and is constructed from the last on-chain moving price of the coin in circulation.
The other is the true market average, which is currently about $79,400.
Bottom formations tend to start below the average but above realized prices. However, if you spend meaningful time below the realized price, that theory weakens. This will give you a usable band.
Even though Bitcoin is above its realized price, the market still exceeds the network’s cost base on average. If it is below the higher average, the market is still weathering the damage.
The report also frames the $60,000 wick as landing near the 200-week moving average, another long-term cycle level that traders are watching. The 200-week moving average is a level that Bitcoin tends to respect during bear markets.
Combining these ideas with cohort rotation brings the story closer together.
February wasn’t about a magical line in the sand, it was about the point at which a forced sale finally hits a wall of buyers willing to stand on the other side.
Why calendar enthusiasts keep getting this wrong
After a surrender event, people reach for their calendars. Because calendars provide a great and clean way to measure things, like 4-year cycles, 12-month lows, and neat anniversaries.
But we have to resist the urge to frame this flash like that. One reason for that is that this bear market may have paid a lot of pain early in the year’s sideways move. Time-based heuristics are most effective when pain occurs primarily in one mode.
However, this cycle was completed in two attempts.
First, it led to stagnation, depleting attention and faith.
What followed was a rapid price collapse, forcing both exhausted holders and new bullish buyers to capitulate in the same chapter. In this case, the “when” becomes more important than the “who.”
The Bitcoin washout happened in stages.
The first act wiped out those who had endured heartbreak for a year.
The second act wipes out those who thought they hit rock bottom early, only to find out that’s not the case.
The market became quiet as most of the marginal sellers either sold in November or February or were forced to exit due to their core risk management being taken away.
With the drawdown assembled this way, the next stage concerns digestion. That is, the cooling of realized loss pressures, the price spending more time between cost-based anchors, and the slow rebuilding of risk appetite to acquire rather than exist with the will.
Two capitulations are no guarantee that we will recover in a straight line. But they give us a map that shows where the weaker forces were and which groups have already paid the cost of retreat.
In a market that loves the folklore of the single candle, the seller map is the more enduring story.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin
