Bitcoin (BTC) short-term speculators have held onto profits for nearly a full month, a stretch that new onchain analysis frames as a key sign of market strength.

According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin's short-term holder (STH) cohort has now recorded its longest consecutive in-profit stint of 2026, staying in partial profit for the past month. Holdings currently stand at $168.2 billion in profit versus $102.6 billion in loss — a profitability profile that has historically served as a hallmark of bullish BTC price reversals. Meanwhile, the broader Bitcoin investor base has remained in net profit since Aug. 19.

Newer buyers sustain a month-long profit streak

Data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant shows that a subset of Bitcoin's STH cohort has been in profit since Aug. 16. STH investors are wallets holding an unspent transaction output (UTXO) for less than six months. They correspond to newer buyers who are more sensitive to short-term price moves and volatility, adding or reducing exposure more readily than seasoned Bitcoin holders — which is why the cohort's collective profitability is widely treated in onchain analysis as a barometer of speculative behavior.

Since Aug. 16, the STH investor base has been split on the profitability of its existing exposure. As of Tuesday, STH coins held in profit total $168.2 billion, while $102.6 billion are held below acquisition price, according to CryptoQuant. The uneven split reflects the range of entry points inside the cohort: because newer buyers accumulated at different price levels, only part of the group's holdings currently sits above its acquisition cost.

For CryptoQuant, however, the precise ratio is less important than the duration of the streak: STHs have held onto at least some profit for 30 consecutive days.

"This is the first time STH have sat in profit territory for a sustained stretch since the market top. The last time was in January, but that episode didn't last more than a week. In May, losses held by STH remained dominant," the firm wrote in an accompanying blog post.

Lengthening, uninterrupted periods of S profitability have characterized Bitcoin market recoveries throughout past price cycles, and the pattern was also observed at the end of Bitcoin's 2022 bear market. CryptoQuant accordingly views the current streak as a prerequisite for the return of a long-term BTC price uptrend this cycle.

"The bear market trend only truly reverses once profits settle in for good STH and then push them to hold their positions and ride the upside," it added.

Within that framework, the number to follow is the streak's length rather than the size of the profit pool — the same measure on which the January episode fell short, ending in under a week.

Newer investor cost bases cluster above $70,000

The data echoes a similar stretch of aggregate profitability currently being witnessed across the Bitcoin investor base as a whole, with BTC/USD retaining the majority of its 25% August upside.

As Cointelegraph reported, the spent output profit ratio (SOPR), which tracks net profits or losses across all investors, passed its breakeven level of 1 on Aug. 19 and has narrowly held above it since. In practical terms, a SOPR reading above 1 indicates that, in aggregate, coins are changing hands onchain above their acquisition price. Last week, onchain analytics suite Checkonchain argued that STH profitability in particular was "starting to look more like those early bull-market recoveries."

CryptoQuant data shows that STH profitability is currently being driven by entities holding between one and three months, a cohort with a cost basis — also known as realized price — of $63,372. The cost basis of the more mature end of the STH base, wallets holding for between three and six months, now sits at $73,190. Realized-price levels like these are standard reference points in onchain analysis, marking the average acquisition price of a given holder group, and the gap between the two helps explain why the cohort's profitability profile is split rather than uniform.

Source: Cointelegraph