BaykusCharts
No One Is in the Driver's Seat
No one is currently in the driver's seat of Bitcoin's futures market. CryptoQuant's 90-day Futures Taker CVD shows whether aggressive buyers or aggressive sellers, using market orders, are dominating futures trading. Green marks periods when buyers take the lead, red when sellers dominate, and gray represents balance. Looking back, a pattern stands out. Major rallies have mostly been accompanied by green phases: late 2023, the final quarter of 2024, and the summer 2025 rally that carried the price to $120K. Tops, on the other hand, have often arrived in red. The spring 2024 top around $70K and the autumn 2025 peak near $125K both coincided with seller-dominant periods. The pattern does not always hold, however. In the first half of 2023, takers were on the sell side, yet the price still climbed from $16K to $30K. The green phase in spring 2026 also failed to produce a lasting recovery, as the price fell back to the $60K range during the summer. Today, the picture is gray. A brief green phase in September pushed the price toward $85K before the metric returned to neutral. With Bitcoin at $78K, neither buyers nor sellers are acting aggressively in the futures market. The key thing to watch is the next color. A shift to green would signal that the rally is once again being supported by futures buying. A shift to red would mean sellers are taking the initiative. When the market is quiet, patience matters more than direction. And when the color changes, those who do not rush tend to come out ahead.