Bitcoin

holders have increased their profit-taking activity since the cryptocurrency’s price averages flashed a key bullish signal two weeks ago.

BTC’s 50-day simple moving average (SMA) crossed above its 200-day SMA on May 22, confirming a golden cross – a technical indicator signaling bullish long-term momentum, according to data from TradingView. On the same day, bitcoin’s price hit a record high above $111,000, according to CoinDesk data.

Still, holders are increasingly locking in gains rather than holding for further upside, according to on-chain data tracked by Glassnode.

“Entity-adjusted realized profit spiked above $500M/hour three times in the past 24 hours, signaling intense profit-taking activity,” Glassnode said on X on Tuesday.

The entity-adjusted realized profit represents the total USD profit of all coins that have been moved onchain, where the price at their last movement is lower than the latest transaction price.

The chart shows the profit-taking activity has steadily increased since the second half of May, topping the $500 million mark several times. That’s the most intense profit taking operation since early February.

Other metrics, such as the entity-adjusted spent output profit ratio (SOPR), suggest the same. SOPR tracks the profit level of all moved coins during a given period. It’s entity-adjusted version discards transactions between addresses of the same entity, providing a reliable indicator of real economic activity.

“The recent ATH breakout has led to a notable uptick in profits locked in, with the average coin capturing a +16% profit. Fewer than 8% of trading days have been more profitable for investors, suggesting a meaningful transition into profit-taking activity is underway,” Glassnode said in its weekly report.

The report added that profit-taking is still not as intense as seen during prior major price-topping patterns.

As of writing, BTC changed hands at $105,600 amid reports of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform moving a step closer to offering a bitcoin exchange-traded fund to everyday investors.

Forward-looking: The faster a drive is, the more power it typically consumes. However, SanDisk appears to have cracked the code with a new PCIe 5.0 SSD that pushes the current interface to its speed limits while maintaining power consumption on par with modern Gen4 drives.

SanDisk, the flash storage division of Western Digital, unveiled a pair of new SSD platforms at an investor event last week. These are designed to strike a balance between performance and value.

Leading the premium tier is a new flagship drive poised to push the PCIe 5.0 interface to its limits. According to Tom’s Hardware, this SSD is expected to deliver blistering sequential read and write speeds of 14,500 MB/s and 14,000 MB/s, respectively, in its 2TB configuration. But here’s the real kicker – it achieves those speeds while consuming just 7 watts of power.

To put that efficiency into perspective, most current Gen4 drives hover around the 7W mark, while the fastest Gen5 offerings on the market often draw closer to 10W under peak loads. Sources suggest this new drive could be powered by Silicon Motion’s highly efficient SM2508 controller.

The as-yet-unnamed drive will share SanDisk’s performance-oriented TLC NAND platform with the existing WD Black gaming SSD family. Capacities will range from 512GB to a spacious 4TB when it launches in Q2 2025.

SanDisk is also introducing a new value-focused QLC-based SSD platform that retains PCIe 4.0 connectivity, with storage capacities topping out at 2TB. One drive based on this platform is the Western Digital PC SN5100S, which delivers a 53 percent boost in random read speeds and a 44 percent improvement in random write performance compared to its predecessor, the SN5000S.

When it comes to QLC NAND, SanDisk has ambitious plans to ramp up adoption of this higher-density (but shorter-lived) flash. The company aims to have QLC technology power 75 percent of its storage lineup by 2028 to maximize capacity. At the same time, it is preparing for a full transition from PCIe Gen4 to the Gen5 standard within the same time frame.

Both of these new SSD families will leverage Western Digital’s latest 3D BiCS8 NAND flash to push performance boundaries even further.

All in all, while SanDisk may have a fresh coat of paint, its commitment to flash storage innovation shows no signs of slowing down.