Many people who own bitcoin are keeping their holdings safe, although the price can change quickly. Data provided by on-chain analytics firm, Glassnode, shows that earlier today, the percentage of bitcoin’s supply last active for five or more years reached an all-time high of 25.873%. This suggests that long-term bitcoin users have been accumulating bitcoin on a large scale.
Since it is difficult to determine which wallets are inaccessible due to lost keys, it is not at all unlikely that the near-totality of those funds are accessible but their owners have chosen not to access them. The reason is that while the current level of volatility appears impressive to new investors, it is hardly noticeable to those who entered the market five years ago.
Since 2013, those who acquired bitcoin have seen their investment grow by 154%. At the recent high of $21,400, investors were up 229% on their investment. This is not notably high, considering that those experienced sailors were already successful in weathering the mile-high waves of the 2021 market, which saw bitcoin’s price rise to $64,140 at a profit of 887%.
This is the worst-case scenario: The percentage of bitcoins held by inactive addresses is significant, accounting for a large number of the total bitcoins in circulation. This report includes people who bought bitcoin at about $250 in early 2017 and are now sitting on a current profit of 6,540%. This profit is 8,460% higher than it was at the month’s high. Additionally, people who bought bitcoin earlier and paid just fractions of a cent for each bitcoin they now hold are also included in this report. This degree of volatility is not relevant to holders of this type of investment.
