https://www.coindesk.com/10m-bitcoins-havent-moved-in-more-than-a-year-highest-since-2017About 10.7 million bitcoins haven’t moved in more than 12 months, according to Digital Assets Data, a fintech company building crypto data feeds.
Considering the total number of bitcoins in circulation is 18.14 million, this also means nearly 60 percent of the coins remained dormant and only 40 percent participated in the price action seen in 2019. The percentage of bitcoins lying dormant for over a year is at its highest level since early 2017.
“The sheer size of unmoved bitcoin is definitely a sign of the developing community of HODLers,” Kadan Stadelmann, chief technology officer at Komodo Platform, told CoinDesk.
The top cryptocurrency witnessed substantial swings last year, rising from $3,693 to $13,879 in the first six months only to fall back to $7,179 by mid-December. Thus, bitcoin just about doubled last year despite the brutal sell-off in the second half.
Even so, a large number of bitcoins remained inactive, possibly because investors are expecting a significant price rise following the mining reward halving, due in May. The process, repeated every four years, reduces block rewards by half in order to keep inflation under check.
However, if the market doesn’t live up to lofty expectations, some selling could be seen, Stadelmann said. In that case, the sum of bitcoins lying dormant would drop.
I think the rise from around $3,300 to $7,500 in 2019 was definitely people accumulating in anticipation of the halving.
Watch for rapid sales though as bitcoin reaches it's price targets.
Pretty true it happens almost everytime. Basically Market in built and destroyed based on this same thesis. When the crash from 19k started people who were actually intelligent enough sold pretty much in 17k-18k. 19k was more like a peak of the mountain which nobody actually expected but occurred because certain folks thought that BTC is imminent and it would soon reach $100K now a similar thing would happen. People who have brought BTC at 4-5k once again will sell at a pretty good level and buy again if they find themselves wrong. But similarly there would be some people who would buy at peaks anticipating further price rises. These will be the biggest losers.
Perhaps those coins which bought before or during the ATH, seems like people are trying to HODL and wait for the bitcoin to reach the ATH again so they can recover their losses, I believe they didn't sell those coins or did the cut loss when the price was going down, they might think that it could recover soon. I personally still holding my bitcoin, not gonna sell them wven though the ATH has reached, just holding them as a long term.
Well, eventually HODLers were the winners in December 2017
You think HODLers won?? HODLers didn't even sell around the ATH because they continued to HODL thinking that BTC would go much far. I would say this is a very unique thing associated with BTC - HODLing. HODLERS actually never win in bullish situation because they actually never sell even if BTC reaches the top. They often just remain in an illusion of their unrealized profits. But actually hodlers are the only reason why BTC market actually could survive the 19k crash and BTC took more than an year to dip down to 3k otherwise it would have been an immediate sell off.