Bitcoin traders are cranking up the speculative fervour and piling into bullish bets on its price.

CryptoQuant’s buy-sell ratio on Deribit, which measures the intensity of buying and selling activity in the market, hit a record high for 2025. This high indicates big-money derivatives traders are aggressively positioning for a Bitcoin price spike.

Bettors on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market, put the odds of Bitcoin hitting an all-time high before October at 85%.

The bullishness comes as Bitcoin is likely to hit $125,000 “in the next few weeks” as the de-escalating geopolitical backdrop is likely to incentivise investors to bet on risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies, according to David Brickell, head of international distribution at FRNT Financial, and former forex trader Chris Mills’ Monday newsletter.

“The walls of worry have been climbed,” they said. “This is not a time to be sidelined.”

They said that the quarter-end liquidity crunch that contributed to Bitcoin’s price lull in the latter half of June is expected to ease, and they anticipate Bitcoin will “catch up” as liquidity returns to the market.

To be sure, not everyone is equally bullish on Bitcoin’s price. In fact, there’s been a marked decline in buying interest in Bitcoin, according to CryptoQuant.

Short-term holders, who are typically the primary drivers of sustained price rallies, have offloaded $85.6 billion worth of Bitcoin since May. These traders booked profits as Bitcoin rose to $110,000.

With spot demand drying up, there’s a real risk that Bitcoin could slide below the six-figure threshold, according to analysts at B2BINPay, the crypto business payment provider.

On June 25, they told DL News that a “reasonable scenario” of the selling pressure would be Bitcoin slumping to as low as $91,300.

And Bitcoin perpetual traders are taking that bet. Perpetuals are futures contracts without expiration dates.

There are twice as many traders who have entered bearish short positions on Bitcoin compared to bullish long bets, according to data from CoinGlass.

There’s also the potential for a slight market wobble on July 9 when US President Donald Trump’s tariff hike pause expires.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down by 0.5% over the past 24 hours and is at $107,627.
• Ethereum is up slightly over the same period and is at $2,466.

What we’re reading

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? Please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.