Bitcoin has been skyrocketing, and long-term holders are selling out

Compiled by: Akechi, Annie

Recently, Bitcoin continues to attract attention in the market. Its recent recovery has also set new records with the upcoming halving event. This article will explore the impact of U.S. spot ETFs on market demand and the release of market supply from profit-taking by long-term investors.

Summary

• Bitcoin price once again hit a new all-time high, this strong upward momentum shook the entire market, and this strong rebound even occurred before the halving event.
• We saw a sudden spike in the average transaction size interacting with Coinbase, which represents the scale of new institutional capital entering the Bitcoin market.
• Long-term holders have begun to intensify selling in search of cashing out profits, with the number of Bitcoins sold reaching 257,000 BTC per month, with GBTC outflows accounting for 57% of this.

The period from the beginning of 2024 to the present will be an important page in the history of Bitcoin, because even before the halving event in April, the Bitcoin market price has soared to unprecedented heights.

The chart shows price performance on weekly (red), monthly (blue) and quarterly (orange) time periods. At the time of writing, prices have increased by 20%, 44%, and 55% respectively. If we count the number of trading days last quarter when all three data indicators exceeded 20%, we can see that last weekend marked the strongest rally since the 2021 bull market.

Demand from spot ETFs

After the SEC approved a spot ETF for the US market, market observers generally predict that demand for Bitcoin will further strengthen. However, there are still some people who are cautious. They believe that the market volatility caused by the ETF news has subsided, so they expect prices to experience certain adjustments and corrections. Bitcoin is currently trading at $68,000, 58% higher than the $42,800 it traded at when the ETF was approved, leading skeptics to realize they may have underestimated the power of the market.

To better measure total demand inflows, the chart below shows the weekly average of USD flows through the following intervals:

• Network issuance (purple): Miners (we assume (All miners are sellers) daily network rewards have increased from $22 million/day in September 2023 to $49 million/day today.
• Net flows across all exchanges (orange): We focus on centralized exchanges witnessing both positive (sell-side) and negative (buy-side) capital flows in the months leading up to the ETF approval date significant fluctuations. Since the ETF began trading, the indicator has shown continued fund selling or buying pressure as high as $246 million per day. As of the end of last week, a whopping $17 million was flowing out of the trading platform each day out of the total net flow.
• US Spot ETF Net Flows (green): Despite significant initial sell-side pressure from existing GBTC holders, total net flows into US Spot ETFs averaged $299 million/ sky.

Overall, this indicates that Bitcoin is seeing daily net capital inflows of approximately $267 million (-49 17 299). This reflects that the market is undergoing a meaningful shift, which explains the rapid rebound towards new all-time highs. This growth in capital inflows is likely driven by market participants’ confidence in Bitcoin’s potential long-term value, while also reflecting investor optimism about the future development of the cryptocurrency market. This dynamic could spark more investor interest, further boosting Bitcoin prices. This

We can also separately discuss the flow of funds related to a specific exchange (such as Coinbase) to identify changes in overall market dynamics. The chart below shows the average balances [converted to BTC] into and out of exchanges:

• All exchanges (orange)
• Coinbase (blue)
• Binance (yellow)

The results show that the average inflow and outflow transaction volume of centralized trading platforms has reached quite high values, especially Coinbase. When the Bitcoin ETF was approved, its average trade size peaked at 4.3BTC/Tx.

This metric is particularly noteworthy when compared to historical data, as its historical range has been between 0.2 BTC/Tx and 1.0 BTC/Tx since 2019.

The market is approaching a state of "euphoria"

As the market price of Bitcoin approaches its all-time peak, long-term investors are holding on to unrealized profits and Their selling pressure increased accordingly.

One way to measure the market profitability of any given group of investors is to compare their on-chain base cost (or the average cost price for each group to acquire Bitcoin) to the spot price. Through this method, we can see that its profitability is roughly as follows:

• Long-term holders (blue): $20,700
• Short-term holders (red): $45,800
• Market realized price (orange): $24,400

We can use the LTH-MVRV indicator (i.e. the ratio between price and its underlying cost) to plot the unrealized profit multiple held by long-term holders. This ratio Currently it is 3.28. The following are historically significant threshold level intervals.

• Bottom found (green) (LTH-MVRV
• Bear Market - Bullish Transition (Yellow) (1
• Equilibrium (Orange) (1.5
• Euphoria (Red) (3.5

Based on current values, these investors already know that the market is approaching a state of "euphoria" and therefore higher prices and profits. Historically, as new all-time peaks in market prices are reached, this investor group will Accelerate the sell-off and bid up prices until that investment decision helps form the top of the macro cycle.

Long-term holders are selling

Now that we understand Given the size of unrealized profits for long-term holders, we next need to assess how this group should change in response to this shift in profitability.

A quick and straightforward approach is to look at long-term holders There is a market supply situation. As shown in the figure below, after December 2023, when LTH-MVRV was still in the equilibrium stage, long-term investors have sold off about 480,000 BTC. This means that some of these investors have even sold Before the launch of Bitcoin ETF products, they began to sell their holdings at an average profit of 50% to 200%.

To assess the selling of long-term holders, We consider two pillar indicators: sell-off rate and duration.

The chart below shows the monthly changes in long-term holder supply. Take a closer look at the last two major market expansions in mid-2019 and early 2021 At the peak of the wave, we can see that the selling rate of long-term holders has reached a peak of 319,000 BTC/month and 836,000 BTC/month respectively.

The number of sell-offs in the current cycle has so far reached a peak of 257,000 BTC/month, GBTC Outflows accounted for about 57% of this.

As long-term holders continue to sell, their realized profits are also increasing. In order to track and analyze this development , we calculated the amount of asset transfers by long-term holders as a proportion of the gains and losses they received relative to their overall balances.

As of this writing, the indicator shows that long-term investors are moving the equivalent of their daily Total supply is cashing out profits at a rate of 0.14%. The indicator is approaching levels consistent with early "euphoric" phases and upward breakouts before reaching market price peaks.

In the final part of this article, we created a binary indicator that identifies periods when long-term holders have sold in a volume large enough to deplete their total balances within 15 days at this amount. An outflow of this size represents Long-dormant supply is starting to come into activity, and this change will have the effect of balancing assets to meet emerging demand.

In the chart below, we have used several thresholds to classify sell-offs. Since 2024 1 Since late September, the market has entered a new phase in which this binary indicator has shown declining supply from long-term holders on at least 8 of the last 15 days.

If we look at what happened at the top of the cycle in 2017 and 2021, we see that similar conditions lasted 123 and 225 days respectively. The market has been in this state for 42 days so far, which may indicate that demand inflows may catch the selling from long-term holders in the coming months (if history is anything to go by).

Summary

Recently, Bitcoin’s performance once again surprised investors as it rebounded to its previous historical peak before the halving event. This is the first time this has happened. We can see that the new US-approved spot ETFs have brought significant supply demand to the market, which has somewhat offset the price volatility brought about by daily mining and the recent selling pressure exerted on trading platforms.

As the price of Bitcoin approaches its all-time peak, long-term holders are accelerating their selling behavior, which is a trend we have seen in all previous cycles. This trend allows us to use ETFs as a tool to compare these new demands against selling pressure on these indicators from existing holders, and explain why Bitcoin has so quickly risen back to all-time highs.

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