Bitcoin (BTC) Long-Term Holders Pause Selling After 260,000 BTC Flush

Long-Term Holders Pause After 260,000 BTC Flush

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $76,300 after losing 3% in a single day, and the on-chain footprint behind the drawdown tells a story the candlestick alone does not. Glassnode's long-term holder net position change — the metric tracking how many coins leave or enter wallets older than 155 days — swung sharply negative in mid-August, recording an outflow of roughly 260,000 Bitcoin coins. That is the deepest distribution from veteran wallets since January 2025, and it followed an accumulation stretch between March and June in which the same cohort was steadily buying. Selling into strength — distributing while buy-side liquidity absorbs the flow — is exactly what the August data shows, as our reading of the chart series confirms directly.

The timing is what stings. When Bitcoin printed its late-2025 all-time high near $122,000, long-term holders sold only about 170,000 BTC; in August, with price near $80,000, they offloaded more than they had at the top — a round trip that quantifies how much paper profit was surrendered into strength. The coins did not disappear. They migrated from long-dormant wallets into the hands of newer buyers, a whale-scale handover that resets the cost basis of floating supply. Layered on top of corporate treasuries that keep accumulating — Strategy's 845,050 BTC stash among them — the effective float is tightening from both ends. By September, however, the selling has almost entirely stopped. Our read of the net position change series is that the flush has exhausted itself: the cohort that generated August's supply pressure is no longer adding to it, and veteran wallets appear to have reverted to the classic HODL playbook. That leaves the freshly distributed coins — and the market that absorbed them — to decide the next leg.

Short-Term Holders' Profit Flip Under Pressure

The identity of the buyers explains why this flip matters. Short-term holder supply — coins moved within the past 155 days — sat in loss for nine consecutive months, with aggregate unrealized losses peaking above $600 billion. In practical terms, nine months of underwater supply meant every dip forced capitulation; the August reversal was the first window in which selling pressure became voluntary rather than forced. Supply-side profit jumped to roughly $260 billion while losses collapsed toward zero, leaving the cohort that bought the dump briefly sitting on a clean cushion.

That cushion is thinning fast. Profit has since fallen to $168.2 billion and losses have climbed back to $102.6 billion as price drifted lower — the flip wobbling under its own weight. The chart side matches the on-chain side. Bitcoin cleared the descending trendline from its January high, then stalled in early September at $82,613, a level marking the 0.618 retracement of the decline from $97,950 to $57,802. Price has since slipped back beneath the 0.5 retracement at $77,876. Support sits at $76,500, and below it the $73,000–$75,000 band lines up with the 0.382 retracement — the zone where most August buyers would go underwater. Technically, the tape is cooling without panic: trading volume has thinned since late August without a single heavy sell day, and the Relative Strength Index has eased from roughly 78 to 53. Holding above $76,500 and reclaiming $81,000 would keep the profit flip intact and signal that early September's stall was consolidation rather than rejection; a slide toward $73,000 would reverse the flip and sink the new cohort back into the red. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

$76,500 Decides the Handover

Read together, the datasets describe a completed supply transfer rather than a breakdown: the deepest long-term holder distribution since January 2025 was met by a short-term cohort willing to absorb it, and the market is marking that handover at $76,500. The primary record we anchor on — the Glassnode net position change chart — confirms distribution has stalled, leaving demand as the only open variable, demand that recently saw BlackRock's IBIT lead $160 million back to spot Bitcoin ETFs. Readers mapping the wider cycle can use our Bitcoin Rainbow Chart guide; the four-year framing puts today's arm where the 2015, 2018 and 2022 lows formed, though it presumes the halving cycle still holds. As our desk flagged with the recent $75 billion spot volume spike, absorption without distribution is the structure bull phases are built on — and our Bitcoin coverage will track whether $76,500 holds it.