It’s now becoming challenging to buy bitcoins, as about 78% of BTCs in circulation (18.9 million BTCs) is held by large entities that have been holding bitcoin as long-term investments.
Only 21 million BTCs are ever going to be produced in total and presently, there are about 18.9 million BTCs in circulation. This shows a differential of about 2.1 million BTCs that are left to be produced, not forgetting that about 4.5 million Bitcoin have been lost forever.
It also means that liquidity is drying up, as demand for the world’s most popular crypto hits record highs.
A study by Glassnode, a crypto analytic firm, explained the reasons for the difficultly in buying Bitcoin.
“It is estimated that only 4.2 million BTC or 22% of the total supply of BTC is in constant circulation and available for buying and selling. In other words, 78% of the circulating supply of BTC is considered illiquid,” said Glassnode.
Data retrieved from Glassnode revealed that 78% of the Bitcoin available are not for sale and are kept by many crypto investors for wealth preservation.
In addition, the crypto analytic firm calculated that a million Bitcoins (BTC) or almost $30 billion in actual prices, disappeared from the liquid supply in 2020. This process even outperformed the inflow of new Bitcoins (BTC) into the network.
“Currently, we are at a stage in which the illiquid supply is growing more than the total circulating supply. A similar pattern presently played out again during the bullish rally of 2017,” added Glassnode.
