On-chain data shows that historic Bitcoin investors in the current cycle are waking up at a faster pace than ever before.
10+ year Bitcoin tokens have been seeing massive movements lately
As CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno, explained in: post on X, more OG investors have woken up in the current Bitcoin cycle than ever before.
An captivating metric on the chain is the “10-Year Coin Spend Rate,” which basically tells us what percentage of coins that have been dormant for 10 years or more have seen a change in the last 30 days.
When this indicator is high, it means that some former online investors have finally broken their silence over the past month. Relocation of such venerable coins is generally not a common occurrence, so it is worth paying attention to this type of trend when it develops.
Here is a chart showing the 10+ year coin spend ratio trend for Bitcoin over the last few years:
The value of the metric appears to have been high recently | Source: CryptoQuant
As you can see in the chart above, the indicator saw a huge boost already in March. At its peak, the metric value reached 3.7%, which is the highest level recorded in the history of this asset.
This acute move in the dormant coin market came as the cryptocurrency’s price set a recent all-time high (ATH). Typically, such venerable coins are moved for the purpose of selling them. Particularly for this spike, profit-taking seems to be a likely motivation given the ATH collapse.
After this peak, the value of the indicator saw a noticeable decline as the Bitcoin price itself struggled. However, with the recent recovery that the cryptocurrency has seen, the indicator has also rebounded.
Currently, the indicator value is at the level of 2.5%, which, although lower than the previous record, is still a high level compared to the past. Therefore, it appears that historic whales have continued to awaken at a significant rate over the past few months.
Who would be these investors moving such venerable coins? Generally, the movement of dormant tokens is related to HODLers in the market. However, when coins age so much that they are in the 10+ year range, the risk increases that HODLing is not the reason for their dormancy.
Coins of this type likely reached this age through being “lost” due to wallet keys being lost or simply being forgotten that they existed.
Some of the holders recently selling coins may indeed have been OGs who have had no chance this whole time, but it’s very likely that many of these investors are actually those who recently got their hands on wallets containing these dormant coins.
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $68,500, up over 2% in the last seven days.
Looks like the price of the asset has been climbing up over the last couple of weeks | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, CryptoQuant.com, chart from TradingView.com
