Long-term Bitcoin (BTC) holders are suddenly unloading a massive amount of coins this month as the flagship crypto asset dips into the $93,000 range, according to a popular on-chain analyst.
The pseudonymous on-chain sleuth known as Checkmate tells his 102,900 followers on the social media platform X that long-term holders (LTH), or addresses that hold coins for at least 155 days, have sold more Bitcoin in the last month than in any other month in the current cycle.
“Bitcoin long-term holders have distributed $60 billion worth of supply in the last 30 days. Out of all the LTH supply moved since the FTX bottom, 21% of it has happened in November. This is the heaviest profit-taking we have seen so far this cycle.”
Source: Checkmate/X
As Bitcoin corrects, the analyst says there are three main criteria to signal whether a bear market may be emerging.
“Bear markets occur when too many people buy too many coins at too high of a price. The question we have to ask is whether all three conditions are satisfied.
Imagine an extreme, where [MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor] is the principal buyer. It would fail the ‘too many people’ test.”
Despite the sell-off, Checkmate says in a recent interview that Bitcoin is being more widely viewed as a worthy long-term store-of-value asset similar to gold.
“I think Bitcoin has now crossed that chasm. We’re seeing more and more very, very intelligent investors… understand the system…
They’ve had to build conviction on an asset that the world has been telling them that they’re wrong for years and years in order to come to that very consistent, cohesive conclusion that this thing makes a hell of a lot of sense…
So I think over time, the market is working out that Bitcoin is special. It’s different, and it has a role in portfolios, both from just a simple financial performance perspective, but also from a fundamental perspective. It does compete with gold, and more recently, like literally in the last week, we flipped silver.”
Bitcoin is trading for $94,700 at time of writing.
Generated Image: Midjourney
