The “whale awakening” in numbers
In July 2025, analysts noted the movement of eight Satoshi-era wallets, each containing 10,000 BTC, for the first time in 14 years.
In total, 80,000 Bitcoin (BTC) (approximately $8.6 billion at the time) shifted from long-dormant addresses in a single clustered movement observed onchain. Blockchain analysts traced these coins back to 2011, when they were acquired for less than $210,000 total, suggesting a return of nearly 4,000,000%.
Two separate wallets, each with 10,000 BTC and inactive since 2011, were also activated in July 2025. With Bitcoin around $108,000, each wallet suddenly commanded more than $1 billion.
Data from Lookonchain and Whale Alert indicates that over 62,800 BTC exited wallets older than seven years in early to mid-2025, more than twice the amount during the same timeframe in 2024, as reported by MarketWatch.
Indeed, the whale awakening signifies a phase where very old coins start to circulate, long-term holder balances decrease from record highs, and typical whale profiles evolve.
For everyday users, this raises questions: Who actually holds Bitcoin, how concentrated is that ownership, and how do the movements of dormant balances interact with liquidity conditions?
Did you know? Recent analysis indicates that just 83 wallets hold about 11.2% of all BTC supply, with the top four wallets alone controlling approximately 3.23%.
How analysts measure whales and dormancy
Bitcoin’s architecture renders dormancy visible. Each coin exists in a UTXO, or unspent transaction output, with a timestamp of its last movement, transforming the ledger into a time series of coin “ages.”
A primary tool in this context is HODL Waves. Introduced by Dhruv Bansal at Unchained Capital and later formalized by Glassnode, HODL Waves categorizes all coins into age bands (e.g., 1 day-1 week, 1-3 months, 1-2 years, and 5+ years). It visually displays the thickness of each band over time, akin to geological layers depicting patterns of holding and spending activity.
Within that chart are coin age metrics:
“Coin days destroyed” (CDD) and similar measures used by CryptoQuant, Bitbo, and others multiply the number of coins moved by their dormancy period, giving additional weight to very old coins.
Santiment’s models for “age consumed” and “dormant circulation” apply analogous logic across various assets. Significant spikes typically indicate that long-held coins are being spent, as described in Santiment Academy.
To differentiate whales from regular traders, analytics firms classify holders by both holding period and entity.
For example, Glassnode’s long-term holder (LTH) framework considers coins long-term once held for about 155 days, based on behavioral patterns from historical data discussed in Glassnode Insights and documentation.
These metrics are entity-adjusted. Clustering algorithms estimate which addresses belong to the same real-world participant before measuring balances and ages.
Did you know? Different onchain analytics firms set varying whale cutoffs. Some focus on entities holding 1,000+ BTC, while others examine bands like 100-10,000 BTC.
All these tools serve descriptive purposes. They quantify the concentration of holdings, the age of that supply, and the reactivation of old coins. They do not prescribe actions to take with one’s money.
What the 2024-2025 data shows about whale reactivation
With this toolkit in mind, the central question is whether this cycle is fundamentally different or merely louder in dollar terms.
Onchain data suggests a significant shift in observed behavior:
Glassnode’s long-term holder supply, which tracks coins held for roughly five months or more, reached record highs in late 2024 before starting to decline in 2025.
Simultaneously, its illiquid supply metric ceased to rise and began to fall, suggesting that some of the most steadfast long-term coins are finally moving after years of accumulation.
Furthermore, HODL Wave style charts indicate a slight decline in the share of supply in the 5+ year band, while the 6-12 month and 1-2 year bands have grown thicker.
This trend typically emerges when very old coins are spent once and subsequently transferred to newer wallets. A section of the ancient layer is removed and transformed into new ownership without necessarily being sent directly to exchanges.
High-profile cases fit this narrative:
The Satoshi-era clusters that moved tens of thousands of BTC after over a decade of inactivity coincide with a steady increase in the reactivation of seven-to-10-year-old coins.
Various “sleeping beauty” wallets from 2011 to 2013, each containing 1,000-10,000 BTC, have become active in dashboards throughout 2024 and 2025, indicating a revival of early cycle supply rather than an isolated event.
Importantly, dormant coin movement does not inherently signify selling activity. Firms specializing in address identification can often pinpoint exchange wallets, crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and over-the-counter (OTC) desks. In many prominent cases, dormant coins transitioned into other self-custody addresses, multisig setups, or internal restructuring targets without any immediate spike in exchange inflows linked to those specific movements.
In other instances, movement has coincided with legal disputes, tax events, or corporate actions, indicating custody changes rather than short-term trading.
A cautious interpretation of these trends includes:
An unprecedented large base of long-term holders accumulated through prior cycles
A visible yet controlled reduction of that base
A gradual redistribution of extremely old coins to newer hands.
This combination is what analysts refer to as a whale awakening, a phase during which historical supply gradually moves and is observable in real time onchain.
Why whales might be moving now
Onchain data cannot read minds, but it can illustrate where whale behavior aligns with clear incentives and pressures. Several explanations are consistent with the evidence and analyst research.
Profit-taking into deep liquidity
Glassnode and others have illustrated that long-term holder supply often peaks either during or immediately before new all-time highs, followed by a distribution phase. At these moments, realized capitalization and market value to realized value (MVRV), concepts defined by Coin Metrics and popularized by Nic Carter and colleagues, indicate that long-term holders are sitting on substantial unrealized gains.
For early adopters who have held for seven to ten years, even modest sales could yield significant historical gains without fully exiting Bitcoin.
Portfolio and venue rebalancing
Some dormant coins have been traced to institutional custody, multisig setups, or ETF custodians, representing a transition from personal cold storage to regulated entities. Cross-chain flow trackers have also observed old BTC moving alongside new investments in ETH or other major assets, indicating internal reallocations rather than complete exits.
Legal and administrative triggers
Tax events, lawsuits, inheritance planning, and corporate restructurings can prompt the activation of coins that have remained untouched for a decade. It is not unusual for movements by whales to coincide with public legal disputes or regulatory actions, illustrating how court orders and compliance obligations can awaken dormant balances even if the investment thesis remains unchanged.
Age-related structural effects
As outlined in Unchained Capital’s “Geology of Lost Coins” framework notes, each cycle leaves a thicker layer of long, unmoved coins. Some are truly lost, while others belong to individuals, companies, or estates.
Over time, more holders reach points of rebalancing, succession, or custody improvements, leading to increased awakenings each year, even if they represent a small fraction of total supply.
Remember, none of these factors excludes the others, and none can be definitively established from the ledger alone. Onchain data can reveal which coins moved and where they went, but it cannot clarify the reasons behind the transactions.
Did you know? As of mid-2025, credible onchain estimates suggest 2.3 million-3.7 million BTC, totaling about 18% of the overall supply, are irretrievably lost due to forgotten keys, destroyed wallets, or otherwise inaccessible addresses.
How everyday users should read the whale awakening
For many, whale metrics are best viewed as transparency and context tools.
When encountering headlines about whales offloading, observers often consider contextual questions such as:
Are the coins flowing to exchange wallets, ETFs, OTC desks, or primarily into new self-custody and multisig addresses?
Does the movement align with broader trends in long-term holder supply, illiquid supply, and age bands, or is it an isolated incident?
Are metrics like CDD, age consumed, spent output profit ratio, and MVRV indicating a regime change or merely reacting to a brief surge of old coins moving?
It also helps to keep in mind the limits of attribution:
Labels like “exchange,” “ETF,” “government,” or “whale” depend on heuristics and clustering. Different analytics firms may categorize the same entity differently, and some large holders remain unlabeled.
Any narrative regarding who is moving coins is, at best, an informed approximation based on the raw ledger.
However, whale metrics cannot reliably forecast a particular holder’s next intentions or ensure that past patterns of dormancy and reactivation will recur. Developing a foundational understanding of onchain concepts, coupled with independent research, a clear assessment of personal risk tolerance, and professional advice when needed, is a more dependable approach than attempting to predict the actions of large holders.
