The most seasoned investors in Bitcoin are still cashing out – the pressure is starting to show.
More than two months after Bitcoin’s price hit a record high of over $126,000, the token has dropped by nearly 30% and is struggling to find support. One reason is that long-term holders are still selling off. The latest blockchain data shows that Bitcoin held for years is being sold at the fastest pace in recent years, while the market’s ability to absorb these Bitcoins is gradually weakening.
According to a report by K33 Research, since the beginning of 2023, the number of bitcoins that have not been moved for at least two years has decreased by 1.6 million, with a value of approximately 140 billion US dollars. This indicates that long-term holders are continuously selling off their bitcoins.
In 2025 alone, nearly $300 billion worth of Bitcoin that had been dormant for over a year re-entered circulation. Blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant reported that long-term Bitcoin holders have received one of the largest distributions in over five years over the past 30 days.
“The market is experiencing a slow decline, characterized by continuous selling of spot assets and insufficient buying liquidity, which has led to a gradual decline that is more difficult to reverse than a leveraged-driven capitulation sell-off,” said Chris Newhouse, research director at Ergonia, a company specializing in decentralized finance.
For much of the past year, these sell-offs were absorbed by surging demand from newly launched exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and crypto investment firms. But that demand has waned. ETF fund flows have turned negative. Derivatives trading volumes have declined. Retail participation has also dropped. The same supply is now flowing into a weak market with fewer active buyers.
Since October 10th, the cryptocurrency market has been under the most severe pressure. On that day, US President Trump made unexpected remarks on punitive tariffs, causing a sell-off of up to 19 billion US dollars in the cryptocurrency market. This was the largest single-day leveraged trading volume in the history of cryptocurrencies. Since the crash, traders have been fleeing the derivatives market, and there are currently few signs of a rebound.
Vetle Lunde, a senior analyst at K33, said: “Unlike previous cycles, this reactivation of Bitcoin is not driven by altcoin trading or protocol incentive mechanisms, but by the abundant liquidity brought by US ETFs and Treasury bond demand, which enables early holders (OG) to make profits in six figures and significantly reduces the concentration of ownership.” He mentioned that OG is an abbreviation of “original gangster”, a slang term used by cryptocurrency enthusiasts to describe early adopters and investors. The scale of Bitcoin reactivation this year and last year “ranked second and third in the history of Bitcoin in terms of long-term holding supply, only after 2017.”
According to Coinglass, the open interest of Bitcoin options and perpetual futures remains far below the level before the October crash. This decline indicates that, given that such markets account for the majority of cryptocurrency trading volume, most traders are still adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Meanwhile, so-called basis trading, a method of profiting from the price difference between the spot market and futures markets, has become unprofitable for hedge funds.
However, Lunde stated that based on observations of historical on-chain fund flows, as Bitcoin’s reactivation approaches a certain threshold, the selling by long-term Bitcoin holders may be coming to an end.
Lunde wrote: “Looking ahead, the selling pressure from long-term holders seems to have reached saturation. Over the past two years, approximately 20% of the Bitcoin supply has been reactivated. It is expected that OG selling will decrease in 2026, and as Bitcoin transitions to net buyer demand amid deepening institutional consolidation, the supply will increase over the next two years.”
