Bitcoin Holds $77K Fourth Day as Long-Term Holders Add 2M Coins, Miners Sell 25K BTC

Bitcoin News

Bitcoin entered its fourth consecutive session trading in a narrow band around $77,000, with the largest cryptocurrency unable to break decisively in either direction. The persistent consolidation comes amid muted volumes and a market preoccupied with developments outside of crypto. Spot prices on major venues hovered between $76,800 and $77,500 through Thursday's U.S. session, reflecting balanced flows from both spot buyers and sellers. Bitcoin derivatives data points to compressed funding rates and declining open interest, suggesting traders are reluctant to commit fresh capital while macro attention is pulled toward equity-market catalysts. The grinding range has held since Monday's failed breakout attempt above the 50-day moving average.

Beyond crypto, mainstream attention has gravitated toward technology IPO filings and earnings catalysts absorbing risk capital. Nvidia delivered another quarter of strong guidance after beating consensus, while SpaceX moved closer to a public offering that could value the firm above $1.5 trillion and raise as much as $80 billion. OpenAI is widely expected to file its own prospectus within days, with Anthropic also weighing a listing. Within crypto itself, Hyperliquid's HYPE token surged 16.5% over 24 hours to a fresh record, the outlier in a sea of sideways altcoin price action.

A leading corporate Bitcoin treasury signaled openness to selling holdings to meet business objectives, a notable shift from the "never sell" rhetoric that defined the early treasury playbook. The implication is that liquidation is firmly on the table for any publicly traded Bitcoin holder when capital allocation math demands it. Treasury companies trading at a discount to their net asset value face a logical incentive: selling Bitcoin to repurchase undervalued shares actually increases Bitcoin per share, the core metric investors track. The same calculus extends to funding preferred dividends and debt coupons when operating cash flow falls short of obligations.

Mining operators have already been demonstrating the value-creation case for selective sales. Q1 2026 disclosures revealed that public miners offloaded approximately 25,376 BTC during the quarter, redirecting proceeds toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure buildouts. Management teams have argued that capital deployed into AI capex offers superior risk-adjusted returns relative to passively holding the coins. The rotation reflects a broader corporate philosophy: a company exists to maximize shareholder value, and if a better investment than Bitcoin presents itself, deploying treasury reserves accordingly is rational. The shift challenges hardline HODL orthodoxy without abandoning long-term conviction.

Long-term holder behavior, meanwhile, points in the opposite direction. Wallet cohorts holding coins for at least 155 days now control roughly 16.3 million BTC, an increase of more than 2 million coins since Bitcoin's October peak above $126,000. The accumulation pace has notably accelerated, with around 200,000 BTC added to the long-term cohort in the past month alone. The trend mirrors classic bear market dynamics, where seasoned investors quietly absorb supply during periods of weakness while speculative participants exit. Historical analogs from 2015 and 2019 produced similar accumulation curves before subsequent multi-month uptrends materialized.

The 16.3 million figure sits within striking distance of the all-time high of 16.4 million recorded in January 2024, just before spot Bitcoin ETF products launched in the United States. That earlier peak preceded a distribution wave of nearly 2 million coins as Bitcoin rallied toward its all-time high. Importantly, the latest data suggests long-term wallets have broken out of a 2.5-year downtrend in their share of circulating supply, an inflection that historically marks accumulation phases. The signal: dormant capital is quietly rotating back into strong hands while price languishes in consolidation.

At $77,202, Bitcoin sits sandwiched between immediate support at $76,111 and overhead resistance at $77,922. A daily close above $77,922 would open the path toward $79,423 and ultimately the $82,805 resistance shelf. Below, a loss of $74,281 would invalidate the constructive consolidation thesis and expose the $72,673 floor. The RSI at 46.07 sits in neutral territory but slopes downward, and a bearish MACD posture reinforces the sideways trend designation. Reclaiming the 50-RSI level and flipping MACD positive on the daily remain the prerequisite signals for any sustained recovery attempt toward the $80K handle.