What the 2024-2025 data shows about whale reactivation
With that toolkit in mind, the key question is whether this cycle is structurally different or simply louder in dollar terms.
Onchain series suggest a notable change in observed onchain behavior:$BTC
Glassnode’s long-term holder supply, which tracks coins held for around five months or more, hit record highs in late 2024 and then began to roll over into 2025.#TrumpTariffs
Meanwhile, HODL Wave’s style charts show the share of supply in the 5+ year band dipping slightly while the 6-12 month and 1-2 year bands have thickened.
That pattern usually appears when very old coins are spent once and then settle into newer wallets. A slice of the ancient layer is chipped off and recast as fresh ownership without necessarily going straight to exchanges.#CPIWatch
High-profile cases fit in here:
The Satoshi-era clusters that moved tens of thousands of BTC after more than a decade of silence sit on top of a steady rise in reactivated seven-to-10-year-old coins.#BinanceBlockchainWeek
Crucially, the movement of dormant coins does not automatically indicate selling activity. Firms that specialize in address tagging can often identify exchange wallets, crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and over-the-counter (OTC) desks. In several headline cases, dormant coins moved into other self-custody addresses, multisig structures or internal restructuring targets with no immediate spike in exchange inflows linked to those specific transactions.#WhaleWatch
A cautious interpretation of these patterns is:
A record large base of long-term holders built up through past cycles@DXC Foundation
A visible but controlled drawdown of that base
A gradual redistribution of extremely old coins into newer hands.
This combination is what analysts describe as a whale awakening, a period in which historical supply moves gradually and can be observed in real time onchain.@DJ史珍香 @陌上花开Hawk @Hannah_汉娜 @D E X O R A
