Bitcoin whales are back in buy mode as BTC price strength continues despite a new stagflation jolt for the US Federal Reserve.

Bitcoin whales are back in buy mode as BTC price strength continues despite a new stagflation jolt for the US Federal Reserve. 

Bitcoin BTC $100,450 came within 1% of new all-time highs on Dec. 12 as whales ate away at sell-side liquidity.

BTC price comeback eyes all-time highs

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD returning to $102,000 after the Wall Street open.

Bitcoin built on strength from the day prior, which saw a green daily candle of nearly $5,000.

Analyzing the latest movements, trading resource Material Indicators put the spotlight on large-volume traders.

“FireCharts binned CVD shows that whales are back to making whale sized market orders,” it wrote in a post on X, referring to one of its proprietary trading tools. 

“Now that BTC has reached deeper concentrations of ask liquidity, whales can make those larger market orders without the slippage they would have endured over the previous 2 days when price was moving through a range with thinner liquidity.”

BTC/USDT order book liquidity for Binance with whale volume. Source: Material Indicators/X

An accompanying chart showed increases and decreases in volume for various whale cohorts and liquidity levels for the BTC/USDT pair on the largest global exchange, Binance.

Popular trader Skew nonetheless noted that overall, sell-side pressure remained sufficiently intense to “limit” potential BTC price upside.

“As long as passive buyers continue to slurp we break up eventually,” he told X followers.

Striking a more cautious tone, onchain data account The Bitcoin Researcher argued that short-term holder profitability needed to cool in order for price growth to remain sustainable. 

This was measured using the market value to realized value (MVRV) metric for Bitcoin’s short-term holders (STHs) — speculative entities hodling a given unit of BTC for up to 155 days.

“I’d like to see the Short-Term Holder MVRV return closer to its baseline,” an X post explained on the day. 

“A rising price without STH-MVRV reset often signals an impending market top—rarely sustainable for long. Reset or not, both outcomes provide clear, but opposite, on-chain signals.”

Bitcoin STH-MVRV chart. Source: The Bitcoin Researcher/X

Inflation data fails to dampen Bitcoin momentum

Bitcoin shrugged off a United States inflation surprise in the form of the Producer Price Index (PPI), which beat expectations to come in at 3.0% for November.

Unlike the previous day’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) print, which matched forecasts, PPI showed inflation making what trading resource The Kobeissi Letter described as a “comeback.”

“Has the era of stagflation begun?” it queried in one of various X analytics posts.

As Cointelegraph reported, stagflation already forms a topic for market commentators in the face of rising inflation coupled with labor market weakness. 

After PPI, the latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool put the odds of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates by 0.25% at its next meeting on Dec. 18 at over 98%.