The American supply which fueled the April increase is fading.
Bitcoin Coinbase Premium, the difference between the price on Coinbase (COIN) – which primarily caters to US customers – and on offshore exchanges, turned negative this week for the first time since early April, according to data from CryptoQuant.
The metric was consistently positive from April 8-22, the same window that took bitcoin from $66,000 to a local high near $78,000. The premium peaked around April 22 and has held steady since.
Coinbase is widely used as an indicator of US institutional and dollar-denominated flows, so a persistent negative reading means US investors are consistently paying less than the rest of the world. Either they sell more aggressively or they just don’t show up.
Onchain data tells the same story on the other side.
Bitcoin Realized Loss 7-day Sum, which tracks the total dollar value of coins moved at a loss on the network, hit $5.97 billion on April 24 when bitcoin was trading near $78,000.
Realized loss is only recognized when holders sell coins below the price at which they originally purchased them.
A near $6 billion drawdown at $78,000 means sellers were buyers at higher prices. CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said in a report that the cohort likely entered between $80,000 and $95,000 in late 2025 and early 2026, using the April bounce as an exit rather than a re-entry point.
Both data sets indicate that US institutional buyers are slowing their offering through Coinbase as holders increase their selling activity. Bitcoin was recently trading around $76,000.
What traders watch from here is whether the realized loss metric continues to decline as the subsea supply operates. The figure has already declined since its peak on April 24 to $4.7 billion on April 28, suggesting that the cohort of sellers is dwindling.
