Bitcoin “Reserve Risk” Metric Approaches All-Time Lows

Data shows the Bitcoin “reserve risk” indicator has recently plunged down and is now reaching all-time lows only seen back in 2015 bear and the March 2020 COVID crash.

Bitcoin Reserve Risk Suggests HODLing Relative To Price Is Strong

According to the latest weekly report from Glassnode, BTC investors have been holding strong onto their coins despite the large decline in the crypto’s price recently.

Before looking at what the “reserve risk” indicator does, it’s best to get an understanding of a couple concepts first.

A “coin day” is accumulated in the market for each 1 BTC that stays unmoved for a day. The sum of such coin days in the entire market can tell us about how dormant the long-term holder supply has been.

Because of this, the sum of coin days can be an effective way of measuring the conviction of hodlers in the Bitcoin market.

However, there is another way to interpret the coin days and hence the LTH conviction; as Glassnode explains:

Stronger hands will resist the temptation to sell and this collective action builds up an ‘opportunity cost’. Every day HODLers actively decide NOT to sell increases the cumulative unspent ‘opportunity cost’ (called the HODL bank).

The other idea of interest here is the incentive that these LTHs have to sell right now. It is measured through the current price of Bitcoin.

Whenever the price goes up, hodlers become increasingly tempted to realize their profits, and hence the incentive to sell goes up.

Related Reading | First In History: Bitcoin Mayer Multiple Records Lower Value Than Last Cycle’s Low

Now, the reserve risk models the ratio between this “incentive to sell” and the cumulative “opportunity cost” (explained above) of the long-term hodlers. Below is the chart for the indicator.

The value of the indicator seems to have sharply declined recently | Source: Glassnde's The Week Onchain - Week 26, 2022

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin reserve risk has gone down in recent days and is now approaching all-time lows.

This suggests that despite the plunging price of the coin during 2022, BTC investors have still been holding strong onto their coins.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Monthly Tags Lower Bollinger Band, Tool’s Creator Hints At Bottom

The last time such low values of the metric were observed was back in the late 2015 bear market and the March 2020 crash.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $20.9k, down 1% in the past week. Over the last month, the coin has lost 27% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the value of the crypto over the past five days.

Looks like the price of BTC has been consolidating sideways recently | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView Featured image from Kanchanara on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Glassnode.com