Old Bitcoin Whales Resurface With $760M Move—Brace For Impact?

On-chain data shows Bitcoin whales holding since between three and five years ago have come alive to move a large number of tokens.

In a new post on X, CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn has talked about how some old Bitcoin investors have shown movement recently. The on-chain indicator of relevance here is the “Spent Output Age Bands” (SOAB), which tracks the transaction activity related to a given ‘age band.’

An age band defines a time-range during which coins falling inside the band were last transacted on the network. The 1 day to 1 week band, for example, includes the part of the BTC supply that was last moved between 1 day and 1 week ago.

When addresses falling inside a particular age band make a transaction, the corresponding SOAB registers a spike. In the context of the current topic, the group of focus is the 3- to 5-year-old group.

Below is the chart shared by the analyst that shows the trend in the SOAB of the cohort over the past day:

As displayed in the above graph, the indicator has registered a large increase for the 3-year to 5-year age band, which implies the investors have just moved a huge amount of old coins.

In total, the age band has been responsible for transactions involving 8,003 BTC. At the current exchange rate, this stack is worth more than $760 million in US dollars.

Statistically, the longer an investor holds onto their coins, the less likely they are to sell them in the future. This means that as holders mature into the older age bands, they become more resolute.

The HODLers of the market (holding for more than 155 days) are known as the long-term holders. Considering that the age band from the chart involves coins older than three years, the investors holding them must be stalwart even by HODLer standards.

Thus, to see these diamond hands break their long silence to move such a large stack could be a worrying sign for Bitcoin, if the motive here is for selling, as is often the case when long-dormant tokens shift.

The movement from the 3-year to the 5-year age band has come as BTC’s recovery rally has stalled into flat price action. It’s possible that these whales think this may be their best chance of getting out with their profits, so they have decided to sell.

The SOAB of this Bitcoin group and other old ones can now be worth keeping an eye on, to see if more of the resolute hands join in on the profit-taking.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $95,100, up almost 2% in the last seven days.