On-chain data shows that a large amount of old Bitcoin stock has moved in recent days, something that could prove bearish for the price of the crypto.
Bitcoin stock older than 2 years showed movement in the past week
As noted by an analyst in a CryptoQuant after, a total of four large transfers with old supply took place in the past week. The relevant indicator here is the “Issued output age groups(SOAB), which tells us the total number of coins each age group is currently moving in the chain.
The age categories refer to delivery groups that are divided according to the criteria of the age of the coins (or rather, of the UTXOs). For example, the 1 to 3 million age range includes all coins that have been inactive at the same addresses for at least 1 month and up to 3 months ago. The SOAB metric for this group would then measure the total number of these coins transferred to another wallet.
The age groups of interest here are the 2 to 3 year and 3 to 5 year groups. Typically, investors who have held their coins for more than 155 days are said to have the “long-term holders(LTHs), so both bands contain coins belonging to two different segments of the LTHs.
It is also a statistic that the longer investors hold on to their BTC, the less likely they are to sell at any point. This implies that the holders with such an old offering as in these bands would be some of the most determined HODLers on the market.
Here is a chart showing the SOAB data for these two Bitcoin age groups from the past week:
Looks like there have been multiple spikes in this metric in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant
As the chart above shows, there have been four major movements of coins belonging to these cohorts over the past few days. Three of these transfers came from the age group 2-3 years, one from the group 3-5 years.
The peak of the last cohort was significantly larger than the others, amounting to over 15,000 BTC being moved. All transfers from the 2-3 year age group combined amounted to almost 13,000 BTC, which is still less than the transactions from the 3-5 year group.
In general, big moves from such an old Bitcoin supply are a sign of dumping by the LTHs, and if that is the case here, then that would mean that the current market is out of this so-called diamond hands for sale.
The Quant notes that in any case, these transfers did not go to exchanges, which reduces the likelihood that these transactions are for sales purposes (but obviously does not rule out the possibility, as these investors could have simply sold through OTC deals).
Anyway, the analyst warns, “It is very surprising to see FOUR of these trades in one week. It is definitely worth watching in the near future.”
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $16,700, up 1% over the past week.
BTC seems to be continuing its sideways trend | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Janko Ferlič on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com