Cheatsheet: 45% of bitcoin hasn’t moved in more than 3 years
Billions of dollars in bitcoin are flying across the blockchain as price stops just short of record highs
Metech Multimedia/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
This is Cheatsheet, a primer on what’s happening in crypto today.
Traders are still pumping dog coins — but luckily for our collective sanity, something else has pumped even harder.
Bitcoin Cash fork eCash (formerly Bitcoin Cash ABC) is up 68% over the past day, its market cap jumping to two-year highs above $1.6 billion. The project is still being developed somewhat, but there doesn’t seem to be a direct catalyst for its recent pump.
Other top performers include Shiba Inu (SHIB), gaining nearly 65%, and blockchain-powered video streaming network Theta (THETA), which has jumped 31%.
Zombie coin Terra Luna Classic follows with 24.5%. Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are up 4% and 8%, respectively.
On-chain mail
Bitcoin’s run has coins on the move and it’s changing the holder landscape.
- Diamond hands: 11% of all bitcoin haven’t moved for between five and seven years, the most since early 2017 when the asset was worth $1,000.
- Itchy palms: 17% have moved in the past three months, down from 19.4% at the start of the year (indicating rising numbers of bitcoin held)
- Class of ‘21: 45% haven’t moved in more than three years, down from 49.75% in October (the number of medium-term holders has shrunk slightly over bitcoin’s current run).
Crypto exchanges have now seen their third straight day of net BTC inflows for the first time in one month, totalling nearly $525 million, indicating at least some intent to either take profits or enter altcoin markets.
Still, three of the six biggest days of net outflows since the FTX debacle in November 2022 have occurred over the past three months, with overall balances reducing by around 50,000 BTC ($3.33 billion) year-to-date.
However, outflows haven’t kept up with bitcoin’s price: There’s more than $135.3 billion in bitcoin sitting on exchanges right now, the highest US dollar value since crypto’s previous all-time high.
- Tether has officially entered the $100-billion club, the fifth crypto to ever do so (and the first stablecoin).
- Restaking app EigenLayer has flipped lending protocol Aave for TVL, now $11.05 billion and the second biggest DeFi app behind liquid staking tool Lido.
- BSC lender Kinza and Base DEX Aerodrome are the fastest growing apps for TVL over the past week (Aerodrome TVL at highs of $205 million, raw ETH deposits still a ways off).
Crypto business
Bitcoin fatigue seemed to hit on Monday, even as BTC inched ever closer to new record highs.
- Slim pickings: Only two crypto stocks are set to open Tuesday higher: Cipher Mining (7%) and Coinbase (1.7%).
- Volatile: Miners Argo and Marathon dropped the worst outside of regular US hours, down 8.9% and 4%.
- Mending pending: Core Scientific is slowly clawing back its market cap after escaping bankruptcy — up 34% this month to $740 million but still three-quarters down on early 2022 highs.
Coinbase stock meanwhile is worth more than at any point since crypto’s previous peak in 2021, hitting $55.5 billion, about 30% shy of its highest ever valuation (nearly $77 billion).
COIN’s correlation with the wider tech market — as benchmarked by the Nasdaq 100 — is still holding, currently at 66% after spending much of the past few weeks inverted, per TradingView.
It’s trading almost in tandem with MicroStrategy these days, currently at 93% correlation. MSTR itself doubles as a proxy for bitcoin.
- BITI, the ETF offering short exposure to bitcoin, is now down 72% over the past year.
- Grayscale’s ether trust still trades at nearly 9% discount to NAV after another SEC delay to its pending ETF decision.
- Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is still the richest crypto billionaire on Forbes real-time list, worth $15 billion to Brian Armstrong’s $10 billion.
On the ground
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