The firm's weekly report, released Thursday, found that the entire price advance was driven by growth in perpetual futures demand—a form of leveraged, speculative trading—while spot demand, which reflects genuine coin accumulation by buyers in the market, remained in negative territory throughout.
CryptoQuant's "apparent demand" metric, which tracks the 30-day change in estimated on-chain spot buying activity, never turned positive during April's price surge.
The pattern is not without historical precedent. CryptoQuant's analysts draw a direct comparison to the onset of the 2022 bear market, when an almost identical demand signature emerged: perpetual futures demand rose while spot apparent demand contracted simultaneously.
That configuration preceded a sustained, multi-month price collapse that would eventually see Bitcoin lose roughly 70% of its value from its peak.
Bitcoin has already begun to pull back from its April high, sliding to around $76,400—a move the firm describes as consistent with the historical fragility of futures-led rallies that lack spot-demand confirmation.
Compounding the concern, CryptoQuant's proprietary Bull Score Index—a composite of on-chain and market indicators rated on a scale of zero to 100—declined from 50 to 40 during April, falling back below the neutral threshold into what the firm characterizes as bearish territory. The index had briefly reached 50, a neutral reading, in mid-April, only to retreat as speculative activity peaked and faded.
The firm stopped short of predicting a full market reversal, but the message was cautious: Without a shift in apparent demand from negative to positive, any renewed attempt to reclaim the $79,000 peak would lack the on-chain foundation required for a durable breakout.
