Large Bitcoin holders are back to buying huge amounts of the cryptocurrency after its price dove toward the end of 2024 following a record six-figure high, says a Blocktrends analyst.

More than 34,000 Bitcoin (BTC), currently worth $3.2 billion, has been “accumulated by institutional investors, providing buying pressure for the current recovery in Bitcoin,” Blocktrends head of research Cauê Oliveira wrote in a Jan. 8 CryptoQuant post.

Oliveira explained the buyup came after wallets holding between 1,000 to 10,000 BTC dumped 79,000 BTC in the week after Dec. 21 — days after it hit a peak of over $108,000 on Dec. 17 amid the US Federal Reserve interest rate cut — which “ended up generating a 15% correction.”

He added that “large players took advantage of the consolidation” and started to make large trades broken down into multiple smaller orders, accumulating Bitcoin with its price below $95,000.

Bitcoin seven-day balance change has flipped positive after a nearly 80,000 BTC sell-off in late December. Source: CryptoQuant

Bitcoin is trading at around $94,900 at the time of writing, down around 2.3% on the day alongside the wider crypto market as US jobs and economic data dashed hopes of further interest rate cuts at the end of January.

Bitfinex analysts said in a Jan. 6 market note that sell-side liquidity in Bitcoin markets is “shrinking at a rapid pace,” and the worst of the downward pressure on its price has likely passed.

Analysts, however, are predicting that Bitcoin could be set for a record rally this year, buoyed by expected pro-crypto policies from incoming US president Donald Trump and nation-state adoption of Bitcoin.

Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Matt Hogan wrote in a Jan. 7 paper that the firm anticipates “more nation-states, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will look to establish strategic positions in Bitcoin.”

Blockware analysts said late last month that a US Bitcoin reserve could, in the worst case, push its price to over $150,000, while a best-case scenario would see the cryptocurrency rise to over $400,000.

Magazine: Comeback 2025 — Is Ethereum poised to catch up with Bitcoin and Solana?