While Bitcoin (BTC) was setting new records, wallets in the money realized profits. A cohort of long-term holders from the past months and years offloaded more than 782K coins.
The past 30 days were one of the most successful for BTC, achieving a 30% rally from previous all-time highs. The rising prices led to an outflow of older holdings. While some whales and corporate entities accumulated more BTC, others placed up to 782K coins in the past month. On-chain data is based on wallet movements and does not track whether the coin was sold or just moved.
The data on BTC changing hands arrives at a time when BTC stepped down from its all-time high above $99,000. BTC slid to $91,554.11, sparking fears of a further drawdown and volatility in the coming days. BTC trades 5.24% of its market cap each day, capable of absorbing significant spot selling with limited slippage.
The outflows from long-term holders also contain cashing out miner balances. The total retained balance from all pools is 1.91M coins, falling under 2M for the first time since September. Miner reserves are calculated by different methodologies, but a rough estimate saw miners shed over 155K BTC in the past couple of weeks. Miners are rushing to sell at prices way above breakeven, to be able to continue operations and gain some of the still significant block rewards of 450 coins per day.
Selling close to $100K comes from several categories of buyers, including those that bought near the previous peaks above $70K. Long-term holdings from 5-7 years ago were also among the more active sellers. The long-term holder profit-taking combines with outflows from ETF.
Liquidations sway BTC price more than spot selling
The definition of long-term holders is also skewed toward relatively recent market entrants. Ancient whales or strategic buyers are not directly cashing out. Additionally, some of the deals may be OTC, not risking slippage on exchanges.
One of the main pressures on the BTC market price are liquidations. That factor surpasses spot selling or the occasional whale transfer to Binance or Kraken. The most recent price moves attacked some of the lower long positions, potentially preparing for a short squeeze to a higher range.
BTC open interest declined from a peak above $32B on large centralized exchanges, down to $30B after the latest liquidations. In the short term, liquidations sway the BTC market price faster. BTC is also preparing for the expiry of $9B on Friday, potentially leading to price volatility.
Who is buying BTC?
Despite the data for selling, the metric only says which whales capitulated. Each sold BTC must find a buyer, and in this case, corporate reserves may be mopping up the coins.
MicroStrategy has acquired and holds 386,700 BTC as of November 25, falling behind the recent selling.
During the Q4 bull run, BTC already showed signs of being in the hands of large-scale owners. During the March rally, BTC transactions reached $270K on average. BTC moved at a much faster pace, with over 15M active addresses and high on-chain volume.
BTC activity was lower, showing strategic coin moves instead of FOMO. | Source: Dune Analytics
After September, active wallets fell to under 9M per day, while actual transfers were relatively small and targeted. The recent BTC selling is more strategic, rather than a mass panic of spot selling.
At the same time, reserves on exchanges are also diminishing. This time around, some of the reserves are flowing into new wallets. The share of wallets aged less than a month increased more rapidly, along with cohorts holding for less than six months. About 2% of all wallets are out of money but have acted as counterparties for selling during Bitcoin’s series of new highs.
In the past 30 days, 24,000 BTC moved out of the Bitfinex cold wallet, which is still the second-biggest BTC holder. Another 40,224 BTC flowed out of the Binance cold wallet. On the inflow side, Robinhood added 4,500 BTC to its cold wallet. Another 18,340 BTC were moved to Binance’s hot wallet.
Even with moves at this scale, around 40% of all BTC is still held by large-scale owners and whale wallets.
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