According to a Galaxy Research chart shared by analyst Alex Thorne, Bitcoins older than a year moved an unusual amount on-chain from 2024 to 2025.
The year-to-date total in 2026 is less than half of what it was in 2025, marking a sharp slowdown after two years of near-record activity among older coins.
Thorne read this slowdown as evidence that Bitcoin’s “massive distribution” has largely run its course, citing an old wave of dormant supply that moved during the rally. However, data alone cannot prove whether all transfers put those coins into new hands.
Looking at recent history, the period between 2024 and 2025 is rivaled only by 2017, itself the peak of a major bull cycle, in terms of how much aged supply woke up.
Galaxy’s chart excludes currency and custodial churn, which improves the signal significantly, so you should really pay attention to this number. Coins moving on-chain still only confirm activity on-chain.
A sale requires a transfer of beneficial ownership, evidence that exists off-chain in a way that only investors and custodians can verify.
Coinbase’s approximately $69.5 billion internal wallet migration illustrates that distinction and why Galaxy filtering is important. Large internal reshuffles can skew raw age-based readings, so charts should be read as evidence that older coins are moving rather than directly counting sales.
second signal
According to Glassnode’s latest report, Bitcoin’s bottoming process is still building, with three separate indicators for long-term holders moving in tandem. Profit-taking has all but disappeared, long-term holders’ share of realized losses has stopped rising, and entity-adjusted realized losses have declined from the cycle peak reached about two weeks ago.
Galaxy’s charts start the clock on coins that are more than a year old, and Glassnode’s long-term holder criteria are much earlier, centered around 155 days, according to company documents.
Coins purchased in September 2025 will be over 155 days old by mid-February 2026, a few months before being registered on Galaxy’s 1-year awakening chart.
That same coin may already be seeing losses within Glassnode’s long-term holders’ data, and at the same time be completely outside of Galaxy’s dataset.
| metrics framework | age threshold | what can be captured | What you’ll miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awakening of Galaxy Old Coin | More than 1 year | Old BTC moves on-chain after long hiatus | New buyers in 2025, less than a year old |
| Glassnode long-term holder | ~155 days | Coins held long enough to statistically behave like long-term supply | Is the owner really the owner of the old cycle or a new purchaser? |
| Meaning of the article | 1 year difference from 155 days | 2025 buyers could already appear in LTH loss data | Sellers may be “long-term” in terms of metrics, but they are not old based on cycle history |
The long-term holders who realize losses in 2026 are likely to be the purchasers who absorbed Bitcoin during the 2024-2025 distribution itself, and are a new cohort replacing the old holders who originally created that distribution.
The gap between the two thresholds leaves room for some 2025 buyers to appear in Glassnode’s long-term holder loss data before entering Galaxy’s 1+ year cohort. Neither dataset allows us to identify these sellers at the wallet level.
Profit-taking by long-term holders, a trend that dominated much of this cycle, has all but disappeared, and realized losses now account for most of the remaining long-term holder selling.
This pattern is consistent with some new long-term holders exiting their positions at a loss, although the aggregate data does not reveal who sold.
Test price is $69,000
Glassnode identifies a short-term holder cost basis around $69,000 as the next major level. This is not a uniform break-even point for all recent buyers, but rather represents a large dividing line between total acquisition price and profit and loss for the cohort.
Bitcoin is currently trading in the mid-$60,000 range, and that level is close enough to be a short-term reality test.
A convincing recovery would likely restore profits to most recent buyers and dampen the forces driving further losses. Denial at that level keeps the same cohort underwater, with conditions still fully in place for continued surrender.
Glassnode is upfront about the limitations of what’s going on. In other words, supply is decreasing due to a decrease in sales volume, and new demand is arriving to meet it.
Fewer sellers can reduce the pool of coins on the market, but you still need genuine buyers on the other side to clear that pool.
ETF inflows so far have only spiked sporadically over short periods of time, far short of the sustained inflows needed to see a recovery in real demand.
The unwinding of derivatives positioning tells a similar story, with risk aversion among leveraged traders still requiring physical purchases to back it up.
There are two ways to end the handoff
If spot demand returns and ETF flows become sustainably positive, Bitcoin has room to climb well above $69,000 on a cost basis.
Under that path, the supply share of short-term holders in losses could decline rapidly, while the loss share of long-term holders could continue to decline.
This result suggests that buyers who absorbed deliveries in 2024-2025 are becoming a more durable holding group, but one-time withdrawals do not establish that transition on their own.
If Bitcoin rejects the $69,000 area and returns to its recent range, there could be fresh pressure from new holders, even if the older 1-year supply is relatively quiet.
Losses for long-term holders in that new cohort could then start to increase again, potentially reversing some of the cooling Glassnode observed.
The active weakness of the market would then shift from the old holders who distributed in 2024 and 2025 to the new buyers who absorbed those coins.
Bitcoin’s reaction around $69,000 will provide an early signal of whether that handoff created a durable foundation or transferred market vulnerability to a new generation of holders.
(Tag to translate) Bitcoin
