Bitcoin Investors Are Holding, Exchanges Just Have 12.9 Percent: Report

Bitcoin investors seem to be just happy holding onto the cryptocurrency, estimating that its price will continue soaring more than the altcoins. In its recent report, research firm Glassnode revealed that out of the total supply of Bitcoins, only 12.9 percent is circulating on various crypto exchanges since August this year. The total number of Bitcoin crypto tokens currently in supply is over 18.8 million, which makes it 90 percent of the 21 million tokens that were pre-decided to be created by Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The current price of Bitcoin, which is the oldest cryptocurrency in the world, was hovering around its recently marked all-time-high of $70,286 (roughly Rs. 52.3 lakh), as per the Gadgets 360 tracker at the time of writing.

Glassnode’s report says that as Bitcoin pushed to its recent all-time-high, the supply held by “long-term holders” (LTHs) reached “peak HODL”. As per CoinSutra, “HODL” was originally a typo which has now expanded into a humorous backronym “Hold on for dear life”.

“This is the point in time where they collectively owned a local maxima of the entire coin supply, 81.5 percent in this case. Since then, LTHs have spent 0.73 percent of the coin supply back into liquid circulation,” the report said.

Basically, the analysis says that if investors were not content with holding on to their Bitcoin assets, they would have kept more tokens on exchanges, ready to sell, but that is seemingly not the case right now.

“Despite hovering just below the all-time highs, on-chain activity remains only marginally above bear market levels,” Glassnode notes.

In another observation, the report says that the rate at which new wallets send or receive Bitcoins has also increased in recent times.

On November 9, 516,914 new addresses had participated in a transaction registering a massive 72 percent increase in the number of newcomers who were sending or receiving Bitcoin at the start of August.

In the last thirteen years since Bitcoin first came into existence in 2009, the crypto coin has emerged as the world’s most-valued cryptocurrency.

In 2009, each Bitcoin token was priced $0.0008 (roughly Rs. 0.060), a far cry from today’s prices.

According to CoinMarketCap, the live market cap of Bitcoin currently is $1,244,763,098,851 (roughly Rs. 92,68,506 crore).

The adoption of Bitcoin is also increasing at a noticeable speed.

In September, the central American country of El Salvador became the first in the world to make Bitcoin a legal tender.

In US, the city of Miami has launched a Bitcoin-based native coin called “MiamiCoin” and plans to convert the proceeds into Bitcoin for its residents.

Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.