After hitting a record low of new holders entering the markets this bear market, wealth is finally transferring from “older hands“ to “newer hands“ again.

There are very different kind of investors in this market, we have long-term holders (holding more than 6 months) that also buy in bear markets, whales that have held even longer, then we have the newer buyers that are automatically seen as short-term holders because of their short duration they held the coins (under 3 months of holding is short-term). This kind of groups or also cohorts are very important if we want to talk about a transition from bear to bull.

Typically, in bear markets the long-term holders dramatically increase relative to the percentage of total Bitcoin supply and once we start to enter a reversal the wealth is “shifted“ to newer holders that we as of now can call short-term holders on the on-chain data. This particular increase is what has historically made the transition from bear to bull.

​

Chart imported from Glassnode Insight

Here we have the Realized Cap HODL Waves, the HODL waves are an on-chain metric that are used to see what percentage of the BTC supply is held by which cohorts (Long-term or short-term). We can see that we had hit a low of 12% of all holders being short-term holders this bear market, which is the lowest EVER, even lower than in 2015. Just now we seem to be seeing a shift of wealth to more and more short-term holders/holders entering the markets. The so-called inflection point.

​

Chart imported from Glassnode Insight

This picture also shows how the bottom formation of those HODL Waves is nearly completely similar to the structure in 2018. A sharper downfall that slows down on its way, then sideways-movements until we go back up. The Wealth transfer seems to be happening right now.