Nervous newbies are taking profits while long-term BTC investors hodl strong

Despite short-term Bitcoin trading spiking in January, wallets that have been inactive for at least three years are the largest segment of the BTC holders.

Long-term Bitcoin hodlers appear not to be selling despite 2021’s all-time highs, while nervous newbies have been taking profits along the way.

According to Unchained Capital’s “Hodlwaves” chart — which visually illustrates the time since BTC wallets were last active on-chain, 2021 has seen an increase in both long and short-term activity.

The chart shows the number of coins that have moved in the past 30 to 90 days is at its highest level since 2018. These addresses represent more than 15% and are currently the largest segment of BTC wallets.

Bitcoin wallets that have remained inactive for between three and five years are currently the second-largest segment, representing 13.5% of all addresses. These wallets have also steadily expanded in number during 2021, with onlookers speculating the data may reflect a large number of BTC bag-holders who bought during the 2017 season and held throughout the entire bear trend.

While the share of wallets that have not been active in between five and 10 years appears to have been shrinking over the past year, the number of addresses that have been inactive for at least a decade has increased from roughly 1.7% two years ago to 10.7% today.

On March 11, CTO and co-founder of on-chain crypto analytics firm Glassnode, Rafael Schultze-Kraft shared data revealing the number of wallets that have not been active in the last three or more years has steadily increased since late December.

1+ year hodlers: selling
2+ year hodlers: selling
3+ year hodlers aka “been in a bull market before and know how this works”: stacking sats#Bitcoin

Chart: https://t.co/7VRnyrWbaD pic.twitter.com/MsnZptKxGF

— Rafael Schultze-Kraft (@n3ocortex) March 10, 2021

However, the data shows that the share of Bitcoin wallets that have been inactive for at least 12 months has dropped from record highs of nearly 65% in January to 55% today, with nearly half of Bitcoin wallets active in the past year.