Just been looking at some interesting BTC price forecast data, and the on-chain signals are actually pretty compelling if you zoom out a bit. Since July, bitcoin demand has been quietly ramping up at around 62,000 BTC per month according to the chain data. That's the kind of pattern we saw back in late 2020 and 2021 before things really took off.

What caught my eye is that whales and ETF flows are doing most of the heavy lifting here. Large holders are accumulating at an annualized pace that's actually faster than what we saw in Q4 2024, and the ETF inflows last quarter were massive. If that demand keeps flowing in, the real question becomes whether price can follow.

There's this key level floating around at $116,000 on the Trader's Realized Price metric. Break above that decisively and we're supposedly looking at the bull cycle phase kicking in, which could open up a valuation range somewhere between $160K and $200K. The Bull Score Index has been hovering around 40-50 lately, which is basically the threshold where things historically start getting interesting. Similar setup to where we were a year ago before that big Q4 run.

Obviously a lot has changed since those forecasts, but the framework for understanding where demand is actually coming from still matters. Worth keeping an eye on whether these accumulation trends hold up.