Bitcoin aged one year or more moved on-chain in extraordinary volume during 2024 and 2025, according to Galaxy Research charts shared by analyst Alex Thorn.
So far in 2026, the total is less than half of 2025’s figure, marking a sharp slowdown after two years of near-record movement among older coins.
Thorn reads the slowdown as evidence that Bitcoin’s “Great Distribution” has largely run its course, referring to the wave of old, dormant supply that moved during the rally. However, the data alone cannot establish that every transfer placed those coins in new hands.
Recent history offers only 2017, itself the peak of a major bull cycle, as a rival in terms of the extent to which aged supply was awakened during 2024 and 2025.
That reading comes with a real caveat, since Galaxy’s chart excludes exchange and custodial churn, which considerably improves the signal. Coins moving on-chain still only confirm activity on-chain.
A sale requires a transfer of beneficial ownership, evidence that lives off-chain in ways only investors and custodians can verify.
Coinbase’s roughly $69.5 billion internal wallet migration shows why that distinction and Galaxy’s filtering matter. Large internal reshuffles can distort raw age-based readings, so the chart should be read as evidence of older coins moving rather than a direct count of sales.
The second signal
Glassnode’s latest report says Bitcoin’s bottoming process is still building, with three separate long-term-holder readings moving at once: profit-taking has nearly disappeared, the long-term-holder share of realized losses has stopped climbing, and entity-adjusted realized losses have turned down from a cycle peak reached roughly two weeks earlier.
Galaxy’s chart starts the clock at coins aged one year or more, and Glassnode’s long-term-holder threshold sits far earlier, centered around 155 days, per the firm’s documentation.
A coin bought in September 2025 crosses 155 days by mid-February 2026, months before it would ever register in Galaxy’s one-year-plus awakening chart.
That same coin could already be realizing a loss inside Glassnode’s long-term-holder data, sitting completely outside Galaxy’s dataset at the same time.
| Metric framework | Age threshold | What it captures | What it can miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galaxy old-coin awakening | 1 year or more | Older BTC moving on-chain after long dormancy | Newer 2025 buyers who have not yet reached one year |
| Glassnode long-term holders | ~155 days | Coins held long enough to behave statistically like long-term supply | Whether the holder is truly an old-cycle owner or a newer buyer |
| Article implication | 155 days to 1 year gap | A 2025 buyer can already appear in LTH-loss data | The seller may be “long-term” by metric, but not old by cycle history |
The long-term holders realizing losses in 2026 may be buyers who absorbed Bitcoin during the 2024-2025 distribution itself, a newer cohort standing in for the older owners who created that distribution in the first place.
The gap between the two thresholds leaves room for some 2025 buyers to appear in Glassnode’s long-term-holder loss data before entering Galaxy’s one-year-plus cohort. Neither dataset can identify those sellers at the wallet level.
Profit-taking by long-term holders, the flow that dominated much of this cycle, has nearly disappeared, and realized losses now account for most of the long-term-holder selling that remains.
That pattern is consistent with some newer long-term holders exiting positions that moved into loss, although the aggregate data cannot identify who sold.
The test sitting at $69,000
Glassnode identifies the short-term-holder cost basis near $69,000 as the next key level. It represents the cohort’s aggregate acquisition price and a broad dividing line between profit and loss, rather than a uniform break-even point for every recent buyer.
Bitcoin currently trades in the mid-$60,000s, close enough to make that level a live, near-term test.
A convincing reclaim would move a large share of recent buyers back into profit and cool the forces feeding further loss realization. Rejection at that level keeps the same cohort underwater, with the conditions for continued capitulation still fully in place.
Glassnode is direct about the limits of what’s happening: reduced selling measures supply easing off, a separate fact from new demand arriving to meet it.
Fewer sellers can shrink the pool of coins hitting the market, and that pool still needs real buyers on the other side to clear.
ETF inflows have appeared only in short, scattered bursts so far, well short of the sustained run needed to confirm that real demand has returned.
The unwind in derivatives positioning tells a similar story, with de-risking among leveraged traders still needing real spot buying to back it up.
Two ways the handoff ends
If spot demand returns and ETF flows turn positive for a sustained run, Bitcoin has room to push cleanly above the $69,000 cost basis.
Under that path, the share of short-term-holder supply sitting at a loss would fall quickly, while the long-term-holder loss share could continue declining.
That outcome would suggest that the buyers who absorbed the 2024-2025 handoff are becoming a more durable holding cohort, although a single reclaim would not establish that transition on its own.
If Bitcoin rejects near $69,000 and slides back into its recent range, renewed pressure could come from newer holders even while the older one-year-plus supply remains relatively quiet.
Long-term-holder losses among that newer cohort could then begin rising again, reversing part of the cooling Glassnode has observed.
That would shift the market’s active weak point from the older holders who distributed during 2024 and 2025 to the newer buyers who absorbed those coins.
Bitcoin’s response around $69,000 would offer an early signal of whether that handoff produced a durable base or transferred the market’s vulnerability to a new generation of holders.
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