Bitcoin (Bitcoin) is approaching a new milestone this Christmas as the redistribution of BTC supply continues.
Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode show The total BTC balance of so-called “accumulation addresses” is nearing an all-time high.
“HODL Only” BTC Addresses Near 1 Million
Behind the scenes of the 2022 Bitcoin bear market, certain entities have no doubts about their BTC investment strategy.
According to Glassnode, there are more Bitcoin storage addresses than ever before and the BTC balances they contain are near record highs.
“Accumulation addresses are defined as addresses that have had at least two non-dust transfers and have never used funds,” the company explains.
Glassnode adds that those belonging to exchange wallets and miners are excluded from the tally, along with addresses that were active more than seven years ago.
Nevertheless, as of December 25, the cumulative addresses contained a total of 3,099,828 BTC.
That number is getting closer and closer to the all-time high of 3,403,280 BTC seen in August 2015. Since Christmas 2021, our cumulative address balance has increased by approximately 18%.
As of December 25th, there were a total of 793,591 eligible stored addresses.
“Bullish” Whale Sellers?
Meanwhile, on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant claimed in a separate analysis that the overall long-term trend remains bullish despite large hodlers reducing their BTC exposure.
Related: Bitcoin Exchange Withdrawals Sink To 7-Month Low As Users Forget FTX
“The sale of larger (whale) holders to smaller (retail) holders is what you really want to see, believe the long-term bitcoin theory or not. It’s more decentralized.It’s not in the hands of a few whales, it’s in the hands of more investors, and that’s a good thing.”contributor Maartunn I have written In a December 21st blog post.
“On a shorter timeframe, this is still an ongoing risk. But in the bigger picture, we believe this is healthy for the Bitcoin network as a whole.”
The attached chart shows the change in Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) value, with transactions between 0.1 BTC and 1 BTC increasing significantly in Q4.
As reported by Cointelegraphthe increase in the number of smaller BTC wallets came as a result of the FTX implosion, causing users to hastily remove their coins from custodial exchanges.
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