More than two months after the token hit a record high above $126,000, Bitcoin has fallen nearly 30% and is struggling to find support. One reason: long-time holders haven’t stopped selling. New blockchain data shows that coins held for years are being divested at some of the fastest rates in recent memory, just as the market’s ability to absorb them is fading.
According to a report from K33 Research, the amount of Bitcoin that had remained unmoved for at least two years has declined by 1.6 million coins since early 2023, roughly $140 billion worth. That signals sustained selling by long-term holders.
In 2025 alone, nearly $300 billion worth of Bitcoin that had been dormant for over a year has re-entered circulation. CryptoQuant, a blockchain analytics firm, reported that the past 30 days saw one of the heaviest long-term holder distributions in more than five years.
“The market is experiencing a slow bleed characterized by steady spot selling into thin bid liquidity, creating a grinding decline that’s harder to reverse than leverage-driven capitulation events,” said Chris Newhouse, director of research at Ergonia, a firm specializing in decentralized finance.
For much of the past year, that selling was absorbed by a surge of demand from newly launched exchange-traded funds and crypto investment firms. But that demand has faded. ETF flows have turned negative. Derivatives volumes have dropped. And retail participation has thinned. The same supply is now landing on a weaker market with fewer active buyers.
The pressure has been most acute since Oct. 10, when $19 billion in liquidations were registered following unexpected comments on punitive tariffs by US President Donald Trump. That was the biggest single-day leverage washout ever in crypto’s history. Traders have retreated from derivatives markets since the crash with few signs of a rebound in sight.
Some executives view the selling by long-term holders as normal, given that many are sitting on large gains even after the recent selloff.
“When you’re up 1,000x to 10,000x, it is natural to see some of that distribution take root,” Hassan Ahmed, head of Coinbase Global Inc.’s Singapore operations, told Bloomberg TV.
After a brief jump on Wednesday to $90,000, which traders attributed to a raft of liquidations of short positions, Bitcoin quickly resumed its decline. The original cryptocurrency fell back toward the lower end of the trading range seen since the October crash, dropping as much as 2.8% to $85,278. It was trading just below $87,000 at 9:30 a.m. in London on Thursday.
