About 76 Percent of Bitcoin’s Circulating Supply Reportedly 'Illiquid', Indicates Holding Trend Among Investors

The remaining 24 percent of the Bitcoin supply is still liquidated, which means these are being traded and spent via active wallets.

By Radhika Parashar | Updated: 5 January 2022 13:55 IST

About 76 Percent of Bitcoin’s Circulating Supply Reportedly 'Illiquid', Indicates Holding Trend Among Investors

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The first Bitcoin was mined by its anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009

Highlights

Only 24 percent of Bitcoin’s circulating supply liquid
Through December, Bitcoins increasingly moved to illiquid wallets
Investors do not want to spend their Bitcoin holdings

The year of 2021 wrapped up as a fruitful one for the crypto sector with Bitcoin maintaining its position as the reigning king of the price charts. A recent report by analytics provider Glassnode has observed that 76 percent of Bitcoin's circulating supply is currently illiquid, which means it is moved into wallets that have no history of spending. The anonymous Bitcoin creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto has capped the total number of Bitcoin tokens to be mined at 21 million. As per CoinMarketCap, 18.9 million Bitcoins have already been mined and are in the circulating supply.

“We can see that over the final months of 2021, even as prices corrected, there has been an acceleration of coins from liquid, into illiquid wallets,” Glassnode said in its report.

The remaining 24 percent of the Bitcoin supply presently makes for the liquidated circulation from wallets that are active in spending or trading their holdings.

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As per CoinMarketCap, 40,049,185 crypto wallets have Bitcoin holdings. Out of these, 963,625 are active wallets.

The Glassnode report has indicated that Bitcoin investors are more interested in holding and accumulating tokens, rather than spending them. Bitcoin holders are clearly expecting big returns on their holdings in the days to come.

“There has been an acceleration of coins from liquid into illiquid wallets. Through December, coins moved to increasingly illiquid wallets at a rate of between 50,000 and 100,000 Bitcoins per month, reflecting a higher likelihood of broader accumulation,” the findings added.

In the last thirteen years since Bitcoin first came into existence in 2009, the crypto coin has emerged as the world's most-valued cryptocurrency.

In 2009, each Bitcoin token was priced at $0.0008 (roughly Rs. 0.060), a long way down from its current prices.

It is also noteworthy that the pseudonym of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, holds 1,125,150 Bitcoin tokens in a dormant wallet, amounting to around $66 billion (roughly Rs. 4,96,814 crore).

Even though 90 percent of Bitcoin's pre-decided 21 million tokens have been mined, it will take 120 years for the remaining 10 percent Bitcoin tokens to come into the circulating supply, a report in December had said.

The process of “Bitcoin halving” had emerged as the reason for this prolonged period required to bring all Bitcoin tokens to the market.

The term refers to a pre-programmed event that occurs every 210,000 blocks, in the present situation that is roughly four years from today and which cuts Bitcoin's inflation rate as well as the rate at which new tokens enter circulation by half.

The current market cap of Bitcoin stands at $2,231,353,914,105 (roughly Rs. 1,66,16,892 crore).

Interested in cryptocurrency? We discuss all things crypto with WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty and WeekendInvesting founder Alok Jain on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More