Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Continue Exchange Inflows, But Price Holds On

July 7, 2023

On-chain data shows that Bitcoin short-term holders have continued to make exchange inflows, but the asset’s price has held on so far.

Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Make High Deposits For 20 Straight Days

According to data from the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, the short-term holders have sent 617,000 BTC to exchanges during the past 20 days. The “short-term holders” (STHs) here refer to Bitcoin investors who have been holding onto their coins since less than 155 days ago.

The STHs are generally the less experienced hands of the market, who may easily sell during periods of widespread FUD in the market, or during sharp surges in the cryptocurrency’s price.

Usually, these investors make use of exchanges for participating in such selloffs, so the data for their “exchange inflows” can provide hints about their current behavior.

The exchange inflow here naturally refers to the total amount of Bitcoin that the STHs are depositing to the wallets of centralized exchanges. When the value of this metric is high, it can be a sign that these holders are selling a large number of coins currently. Naturally, such a trend may have bearish consequences for the asset’s price.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin exchange inflow for these STHs over the past year or so:

Here, the Bitcoin STH exchange inflows are represented in terms of the percentage of their supply. As the supply of these investors can change, it makes more sense to consider the percentage of it as it would make comparisons with history easier (the pure figures, on the other hand, may be incompatible).

From the graph, it’s visible that the Bitcoin STH exchange inflows have been elevated recently. During the last 20 days, these investors’ inflows have measured above 1% of their supply.

In this period, the cohort has deposited a total of about 617,000 BTC ($18.6 billion at the current exchange rate) to these platforms, which is quite a significant amount.

In the chart, Glassnode has also highlighted the previous instances during the last year or so where the indicator crossed the same threshold of 1%. It looks like in terms of the magnitude of the inflow spikes, the three capitulation periods that followed the LUNA collapse, 3AC bankruptcy, and FTX crash, respectively, saw larger peaks than the recent levels.

The duration of the latest period of elevated exchange inflow activity from the Bitcoin STHs, however, has been quite extraordinary, as it has gone on for at least 20 days so far. Whereas the aforementioned capitulation selloffs only lasted for 13 days each.

Nevertheless, despite the high selling pressure from this cohort, It would appear that the price of the cryptocurrency has been holding strong thus far, as it’s still floating above the $30,000 level.