By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Judging by recent news, Bitcoin has once again hit a new record! This time it’s the amount of Bitcoin supply which hasn’t been moved for more than five years. It reached an all-time high of 21,6%.
Recently, Matt Odell from the Tales Of The Crypt podcast shared an interesting tweet. He says that the amount of Bitcoin supply which hasn’t been moved or touched has reached an all-time high of 21,6%.
"The amount of Bitcoin (BTC) supply that has been untouched (i.e. not transferred) for at least five years recently reached an all-time high. This potentially signals that BTC is increasingly becoming a store of value, as opposed to a medium of exchange."https://t.co/GGrqOZHmnT pic.twitter.com/TwJG18lFp7
— ODELL (@ODELL) July 23, 2019
The precise amount would be around 3,847,859 Bitcoins. Matt left a reference to a Coinmetrics research where they elaborate on this special occasion. As Matt and Coinmetrics explain, this is a potential sign that Bitcoin is actually becoming a store of value, not a medium of exchange.
Additionally, Coinmetrics shared the method of how they calculate this statistic. They calculate the total untouched supply by looking at the total active supply which they define as the amount of unique supply that got transacted for a minimum of one time in a specific time period.
Moreover, they found out that the untouched supply movements can be a sort of indicator for Bitcoin price movements. The untouched supply becomes larger towards a lower price correlation, and the other way around, respectively. This could mean that we are near the end of the correction and possibly are aiming for a new bull run.
However, this occasion has also raised slightly different concerns. Willy Woo, an on-chain analyzer tweeted a graph of Gold price movements over the span of 100 years. It actually looks like an altcoin chart, but only for altcoins it would a weeks time frame. He asks – why, and answers his own question:
“Hmmm…. I think I know the answer, it’s a controlled market with a few hands holding a concentrated supply.”
Probably the greatest risk to Bitcoin's dream is concentration of coins to a few hands, they'll be the new bankers.
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) July 23, 2019
Nevertheless, he elaborated on the issue of Bitcoin being exposed to the risk of coin concentration to a few hands. He says, “they will be the new bankers”. It is actually a well-known fact that the large wallet holders are only accumulating more and more Bitcoin over the years. There are massive addresses that haven’t sold a single Satoshi, but only bought more.
Altseason Incoming?
Mati Greenspan tweeted that he thinks that alt season is behind the corner. In short, he believes that this is another finished cycle in the crypto markets. Meaning that when Bitcoin has had a legit run-up and a correction afterward, people want to speculate more and possibly get into an altcoin position.
So the cycle repeats. Awareness triggers a rally in BTC, then once the momentum fatigues, investors seek other opportunities in the space.
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) July 25, 2019
Still not sure if the pullback is over or if we're even in a bull market yet, but the appetite for risk is apparent in price action today.
Also, many of the top altcoins have nearly doubled in Bitcoin value, he explains. While Bitcoin hasn’t been the best performer in the past week or so, many traders would want to see the ever-waiting altcoin season.
But will it ever come? Some believe that such an altcoin rally like we saw in 2017 might never come. No one actually knows, because such hype with the help of ICOs definitely won’t be reached. But whether the community comes up with a new type of hype-machine, is only a matter of time. We still are very, very early.