Contrary to the 2018 bear market, Bitcoin kept hitting All-time highs in illiquid supply this bear market, showing that 78% of the whole Supply has not been bought or sold for a long time.

One speciality of Bitcoin is its pre-programmed supply, we know that there will be exactly 21M BTC in circulation ever and this number can be even further decreased as any estimate that about 3M BTC, 14% of the whole supply, is lost forever. This brings us down to, 19M (current supply) - 3M, 16M of the supply left but if you would now think that this is the supply we are trading with, you are foolish.

In reality a large percentage of that supply is seen as illiquid supply, coins that have not been traded in any way for a longer period, usually above 6 months. Those are the coins that have been put into cold storage, meaning hardware wallets or other wallets that won‘t be touched for a while by their holders.

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Illiquid Supply sitting at 78%, 15M BTC, untouched for a longer period. Chart by James V.Straten

This illiquid supply has, surprisingly, been hitting new ATHs since early 2022 and from then on in a regular basis. This is quite extraordinary as during the last bear market in 2018, the illiquid supply went down with the price but on the other hand in the bear market even before that, in 2015, the illiquid supply has also been hitting constant ATHs during a bear market.

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Does this possibly indicate that we are rather in a spot like 2015 and are about to see a 2018-like rally up? Possibly, but to try and predict the price with on-chain metrics like this is unproven to be precise. So better not try to do that.

Instead I think that people are now finally starting to see BTC as a Store of Value asset rather than anything else. People have actually started to see Bitcoin as an asset to hold for the long-term rather than trading it off TA. Which is good as this is undoubtedly the best strategy to have, just HODL.