You Can’t Blame Bitcoin Hodlers for Record 50% Price Drop, According to Newest Data

Recent drop in Bitcoin’s (BTC) price “did not come” from the coin’s hodlers, according to the new research.

Data published by Unchained Capital on March 17 shows that Bitcoin which had been “parked” for a long period did not budge as a result of price changes in 2019 or 2020.

Hodlers have “hands of steel”

Providing the latest version of its “hodl waves” graphic, the company noted that the fraction of the Bitcoin supply in storage for five years or more had increased over the past year.

“The volatility certainly didn’t come from the >5y HODLers. Are those coins lost or do those bitcoiners have hands of steel?” a tweet presenting the data asked.

“Over the course of the last year the percent of >5y coins has increased from 20.37% > 21.65%, or by ~233,800 BTC.”

Bitcoin hodl waves diagram. Source: Unchained Capital / Twitter

As hodl waves show, it was those transactions involving coins stored for half a year of less which stimulated the market during 2019’s bull run and the current sell-off.

“A majority of the volatility came from UTXOs 6 months old or younger,” Unchained Capital explained.

Major Bitcoin miners want to double market share

Similar findings were presented by another monitoring resource Coin Metrics. Moreover, crypto analyst Keith Wareing noted that miners who survived the price drop will shield themselves from May’s block reward halving in advance. An earlier report presented by CryptoTheNews indicates that this is already happening, with miners actively buying new equipment.

Miners will also do this by taking each block smaller miners no longer claim after leaving mining — the production cost for Bitcoin mining was estimated at about $8,000 as of last week.

“Why dump? Half the miners capitulate then only the hardware producing miners remain thus doubling their market share so then remain unaffected by the halving,” he stated in private comments.

Hodling sentiments persist among stalwart Bitcoin supporters, even though the cryptocurrency has lost almost 50% in just a couple of days.