Bitcoin Reclaims $72K as Sellers Retreat and War Jitters Fail to Stick
Bitcoin spent most of February getting sold. The February 28 airstrikes on Iran knocked it to $63,000. Macro headwinds, elevated bond yields, oil prices climbing on Hormuz fears, a Fed that has effectively ruled out a March cut, kept a lid on any recovery attempt.
Then, during today’s Asia session, something shifted. BTC crossed the 200-week exponential moving average and the old 2021 all-time high at $69,000 in a single move, posting a 5% gain and reaching $71,134 before extending further intraday. At the time of writing, BTC trades at $71,677 up 7.3% in the past day.
It’s the kind of price action that tends to generate two reactions simultaneously: relief from anyone who bought the dip, and skepticism from anyone who has watched Bitcoin do this before, recover sharply, then stall and roll over.
Both reactions are probably reasonable right now. The macro picture however hasn’t been resolved. Oil is still elevated. The war hasn’t ended. But the onchain data offers at least one concrete reason to take the move seriously.
What the Exchange Flow Data Actually Shows
According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin exchange inflows on March 3 registered just 28,235 BTC, dramatically below prior cycle highs that ranged between 97,587 and 134,619 BTC.
Exchange inflow measures how much BTC is moving onto trading platforms, and high readings typically signal impending sell pressure. The current reading is the kind of number that has historically coincided with market bottoms and accumulation phases rather than continued distribution.
It doesn’t guarantee a sustained recovery, but it does suggest the sellers who drove the correction may be largely exhausted. The Balance of Power indicator, meanwhile, turned positive at 0.77 on the daily chart, buyers gaining short-term control after weeks of sideways churn.
Social activity backed the move. LunarCrush tracked more than 417,000 BTC mentions on Wednesday, roughly 127% above the daily average, approaching levels last seen during major prior rallies.
Whether social volume leads price or just reflects it is always debatable, but the signal is consistent with the broader picture: attention is returning, and the worst of the panic selling appears to have passed.
The ETF Hangover Is Real
The recovery narrative gets more complicated when you look at the institutional side. More than $8.9 billion exited spot Bitcoin ETFs during the correction, the largest cumulative drawdown since these products launched in January 2024.
BlackRock’s IBIT alone saw more than 42,000 BTC leave after peak holdings exceeded 806,000 BTC. The average realized price for ETF investors sits around $79,000, meaning most of that capital is still sitting at a loss relative to entry levels even after today’s rally.
QCP Capital, in its Wednesday analysis, also revealed that Bitcoin’s strength “may prove an early tell for risk appetite turning more broadly,” the firm wrote, while also flagging that energy disruptions from the Strait of Hormuz situation could still feed back into inflation expectations and risk pricing in ways that are hard to predict from here.
