There has been a longer-ranging positive for recently-weak bitcoin prices. The number of addresses holding at least one bitcoin is now at an all-time high.
Those are also known as “wholecoiner” addresses, and recent data from Glassnode confirms that as of May 13, the number of wholecoiners is at record highs. That implies smaller crypto market participants used the crypto winter of 2022 and this year’s pullbacks to grow their bitcoin positions. Now, many such participants have gathered together enough of the digital currency to get to the much-ballyhooed “one” level.
The rise of wholecoiners is important because smaller bitcoin owners tend to hold the cryptocurrency for longer periods of time. This can somewhat dampen broader bitcoin market volatility. Because of small initial stakes, these market participants are unlikely to sell at the first big decline or depart into substantial rallies.
Rather, many wholecoiners take a long-term view of bitcoin and see value in incrementally building stakes and buying on dips. Additionally, we can assume a fair number of these market participants will continue to build their positions. They don’t want to liquidate all of their bitcoin holdings just after reaching their personal price objectives.
Wholecoiner Details
There are now about one million wholecoiners holding at least one bitcoin. Alone, that’s impressive, but there’s more to the story that could be encouraging for crypto bulls.
“While the round number ‘one million’ marks a new notch in the record books, it’s worth pointing out that one Bitcoin wallet address doesn’t always represent a single person,” reported Tom Mitchelhill for Cointelegraph. “Many crypto investors have multiple Bitcoin addresses and other addresses belong to major institutions like cryptocurrency exchanges and investment firms that typically own large sums of Bitcoin.”
There are other implications related to the buy-and-hold nature of these investors. As they hold bitcoin rather than trade it, this may support price appreciation. There is, after all, a finite amount of bitcoin, and much of it is permanently lost.
“Furthermore, a staggering 3 million BTC — worth $80.4 billion and accounting for 17% of the total circulating supply — are ‘lost forever,’ according to estimates from Glassnode, which draws the figure from a combination of data including BTC sent to ‘burn addresses,’ wallets with lost keys and large accounts that have remained untouched for more than a decade,” noted Mitchelhill.
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