The “whale awakening” in numbers
In July 2025, analysts observed eight Satoshi-era wallets, each containing 10,000 BTC, move their holdings for the first time in 14 years.
In total, 80,000 Bitcoin (BTC) (approximately $8.6 billion at the time) shifted out of long-dormant addresses in a singular, clustered episode of movement tracked on the blockchain. Analysts traced these coins back to 2011, when they were purchased for less than $210,000 in total, suggesting a returns of nearly 4,000,000%.
Two separate wallets, each holding 10,000 BTC and inactive since 2011, were reactivated in July 2025. With Bitcoin around $108,000, each address suddenly controlled over $1 billion.
Data from Lookonchain and Whale Alert show that over 62,800 BTC left wallets older than seven years in early to mid-2025, more than double the amount in the same timeframe in 2024, as noted by MarketWatch.
Indeed, the whale awakening signifies a time when very old coins start moving, long-term holder balances decline from record highs, and the typical profile of a whale changes.
For everyday users, this raises questions: Who really holds Bitcoin, how concentrated is that ownership, and how do dormant balances interact with liquidity when they shift?
Did you know? One recent analysis indicated that only 83 wallets control approximately 11.2% of all BTC supply, with the top four wallets alone holding around 3.23%.
How analysts measure whales and dormancy
Bitcoin’s structure makes dormancy transparent. Every coin resides in a UTXO, or unspent transaction output, marked with a timestamp of its last movement, turning the ledger into a time series of coin “ages.”
A key tool here is HODL Waves. Introduced by Dhruv Bansal at Unchained Capital and later formalized by Glassnode, HODL Waves categorizes all coins into age bands (for instance, 1 day-1 week, 1-3 months, 1-2 years, and 5+ years). It illustrates the thickness of each band over time, resembling geological layers that reveal patterns in holding and spending behavior.
Inside that chart are coin age metrics:
“Coin days destroyed” (CDD) and related measures from CryptoQuant, Bitbo, and others multiply the number of coins shifted by their dormancy duration, granting extra significance to very old coins.
Santiment’s “age consumed” and “dormant circulation” models employ similar principles across various assets. Significant spikes generally indicate that long-held coins are being utilized, as outlined in Santiment Academy.
To differentiate whales from regular traders, analytics firms categorize holders based on both holding duration and entity.
For instance, Glassnode’s long-term holder (LTH) framework considers coins long-term once held for approximately 155 days, based on behavioral thresholds in historical data detailed in Glassnode Insights and documentation.
Naturally, these metrics are entity-adjusted. Clustering algorithms assess which addresses correspond to the same real-world entity before calculating balances and ages.
Did you know? Different onchain analytics firms establish varied whale thresholds. Some examine entities holding 1,000+ BTC, while others focus on ranges like 100-10,000 BTC.
All these tools are descriptive. They measure the concentration of holdings, the age of that supply, and when old coins become active again. They do not inherently advise anyone on how to handle their funds.
What the 2024-2025 data shows about whale reactivation
With that toolkit in mind, the central query is whether this cycle is fundamentally different or merely more pronounced in dollar terms.
Onchain series indicate a significant shift in observed onchain behavior:
Glassnode’s long-term holder supply, tracking coins held for roughly five months or more, achieved record highs in late 2024 and then began to decline into 2025.
Simultaneously, its illiquid supply metric ceased its increase and started to decrease, suggesting that some of the most persistent long-term coins are finally shifting after years of net accumulation.
Meanwhile, HODL Wave style charts reveal a slight reduction in the share of supply within the 5+ year band, while the 6-12 month and 1-2 year bands have expanded.
This pattern typically emerges when very old coins are utilized once and subsequently settle into newer wallets. A segment of the ancient layer is removed and transmuted into fresh ownership without directly going to exchanges.
High-profile instances fall into this category:
The Satoshi-era clusters that transferred tens of thousands of BTC after more than a decade of inactivity sit atop a consistent increase in reactivated seven-to-10-year-old coins.
Various “sleeping beauty” wallets from 2011 to 2013, each containing 1,000-10,000 BTC, have surfaced in dashboards throughout 2024 and 2025, bolstering the impression of a revival of early cycle supply rather than an isolated event.
Importantly, the movement of dormant coins does not automatically imply selling activity. Companies specializing in address tagging can frequently identify exchange wallets, crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and over-the-counter (OTC) desks. In several prominent cases, dormant coins were transferred to other self-custody addresses, multisig structures, or internal reorganization targets without any immediate increase in exchange inflows tied to those particular transactions.
In other cases, movement coincided with legal disputes, tax events, or corporate actions, indicating custody reorganizations rather than short-term trading.
A cautious interpretation of these trends is:
A record significant base of long-term holders accumulated through previous cycles
A visible yet regulated withdrawal from that base
A gradual redistribution of extremely old coins into newer hands.
This combination is what analysts refer to as a whale awakening—a phase during which historical supply moves gradually and is observable in real time on chain.
Why whales might be moving now
Onchain data cannot interpret thoughts, but it can demonstrate where whale behavior aligns with clear motivations and pressures. Several explanations coincide with the evidence and analyst research.
Profit-taking into deep liquidity
Glassnode and others have indicated that long-term holder supply frequently peaks just before or during new all-time highs, subsequently entering a distribution phase. During these instances, realized capitalization and market value to realized value (MVRV), concepts defined by Coin Metrics and popularized by Nic Carter and colleagues, demonstrate that long-term holders possess substantial unrealized gains.
For early adopters who have held for seven to ten years, even minor sales would translate into considerable historical gains for long-term holders without necessitating a complete exit from Bitcoin.
Portfolio and venue rebalancing
Some dormant coins have been tracked into institutional custody, multisig arrangements, or ETF custodians, indicating a transition from personal cold storage to regulated entities. Cross-chain flow trackers have also detected old BTC moving alongside new positions in ETH or other major assets, suggesting internal reallocations rather than complete exits.
Legal and administrative triggers
Tax events, legal disputes, inheritance planning, and corporate restructures can all compel coins that have remained untouched for a decade to become active. It’s not unusual for whale movements to coincide with public legal disputes or regulatory actions, highlighting how court orders and compliance obligations can awaken dormant balances even when the investment rationale remains unchanged.
Age-related structural effects
As noted in Unchained Capital’s “Geology of Lost Coins” framework observes, each cycle leaves behind an accumulating layer of long-dormant coins. Some are genuinely lost, while others belong to individuals, corporations, or estates.
Over time, more of these holders face moments of rebalancing, succession, or custody upgrades, resulting in more awakenings each year even if these still account for a minor portion of the total supply.
It’s important to remember that none of these factors exclude the others, and none can be proven solely from the ledger. Onchain data can reveal which coins moved and where they went, but it cannot clarify the reason behind the transaction.
Did you know? As of mid-2025, credible onchain estimates suggest 2.3 million-3.7 million BTC, amounting to about 18% of the total supply, are irretrievably lost due to forgotten keys, destroyed wallets, or otherwise inaccessible addresses.
How everyday users should read the whale awakening
For most individuals, whale metrics are best utilized as tools for transparency and context.
When seeing headlines about whales selling, common contextual questions observers might consider include:
Are coins flowing to exchange wallets, ETFs, OTC desks, or primarily to new self-custody and multisig addresses?
Does the movement align with a larger trend in long-term holder supply, illiquid supply, and age bands, or is it an isolated outlier?
Are metrics such as CDD, age consumed, spent output profit ratio, and MVRV indicating a regime change or merely reacting to a short surge of old coins moving?
It is also useful to keep in mind the limitations 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 significant holders remain unclassified.
Any narrative regarding who is moving coins is, at best, an informed estimate based on the raw ledger.
What whale metrics cannot do is reliably predict a specific holder’s next actions or ensure that past trends of dormancy and reactivation will recur. Cultivating basic literacy in onchain concepts, in conjunction with independent research and a clear understanding of personal risk tolerance, provides a more dependable strategy than attempting to forecast why large holders shift coins.
