Long-term Bitcoin holders at multi-year high: Glassnode

Published at: Nov. 23, 2021

Glassnode’s latest weekly on-chain report indicated that long-term holders of Bitcoin (BTC) are at a multi-year high and markets are not yet saturated with profit-taking.

These long-term holders (LTH) appear to be reducing their spending while continuing to add to their positions, according to the Nov. 22 report by analytics provider Glassnode.

The analysis delved into Spent Volume Age Bands (SVAB), which are used to identify the age of coins dominating the on-chain flows on any given day. The metric can be used to identify when the process of profit-taking or accumulation begins, according to Glassnode.

Consistent spending of coins older than one month began in November 2020 and ended between April and May in 2021. The SVAB metric has now fallen back to 2.5% of the daily volume since concurrently spiking with the BTC all-time high in October. Glassnode noted:

“This can reasonably be interpreted as longer term holders reducing their spending, and thus are more likely to be adding to positions, not exiting them.”

Glassnode also indicated that the total supply held by short-term hodlers (STH) is at a multi-year low, at less than 3 million BTC – which in turn means that the amount held by LTHs is at a multi-year high.

The report stated that “seeing STH supply this low whilst price is near ATHs is a relatively unique case.”

Although short-term holders have taken profits at “historic” high points and broken even at low points over the past week, the market is still yet to become “overly saturated with profit-taking.”

The findings indicate that there is little sign of a major capitulation just yet and the bulls may have further to run before this cycle comes to an end.

On Oct 12, Cointelegraph reported that long term holders were sitting on 13.3 million BTC which was worth $754 billion at the time, despite not seeing any outflows for more than five months.

On Nov. 22, Chinese journalist Colin Wu tweeted in response to the report that the number of non-zero addresses has also hit an all-time high. This suggests that adoption and accumulation is still occurring despite the asset’s 18% decline from its mid-October peak price of $69K.

According to Glassnode, even if the Bitcoin price has retraced more than 10% from the high point recently, the number of non-zero addresses on the network is still rising slowly, hitting a new all-time high, breaking through 38.65 million. pic.twitter.com/qvN3c6Dt1O

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) November 22, 2021