270K dormant Bitcoins move in 2025 – Are early whales cashing out?

Key Takeaways

What evidence shows that old Bitcoin is reawakening?

In both 2024 and 2025, more than 250k BTC dormant for 7+ years were moved from their wallets.

Why do we see this increased movement now?

The breach of the psychological $100k level could have sparked a profit-taking mindset from early holders. Movement for security purposes was also likely.

In a CryptoQuant Insights post, analyst OnChainSchool spotted that 2025 has already exceeded a key metric from 2024. The movement of Bitcoin [BTC], lying dormant for 7+ years, amounted to 255k BTC in 2024.

Source: CryptoQuant Insights

By October 2025, this number was already at 270k BTC. It also marked an all-time high for coin movements, lying dormant for such a long time.

It showed that more and more early era coins were waking up. Waking Satoshi-era wallets are nothing new, and usually raise speculation that early holders were selling. Sometimes, it turns out to be internal reorganizations.

Individual awakenings have little impact on price trends or Bitcoin outlook.

What stories do the once-dormant Bitcoin movement tell?

The analyst pointed out that there could be three reasons why dormant Bitcoin was awakening. It could be from old miners accessing their reserves, and it could also be from security migrations to fresh wallets.

The third reason could be the most compelling. With prices above the $100k psychological level, more and more long-term holders were likely liquidating their holdings.

Source: CryptoQuant

The $100k level has been viewed as a critical threshold for many years, like how a $1 million or even $10 million Bitcoin appears to us now. Over the past year, long-term holders (2 or more years) have seen increased token movement.

In particular, the 3-5 year holding cohort has posted more consistent selling since the start of 2024 than figures it had shown in the preceding years, going back to 2021. This showed that holders’ profit-taking behavior has a cyclical component.

Source: CryptoQuant

Another factor to consider was the falling long-term holder spent output profit ratio. The 14-day simple moving average of the LTH SOPR was at 4.08 in mid-July. Back then, BTC reached the $120k mark for the first time, and the sell-off there was spurred by holders in extreme profit.

In three months, this metric has fallen to 1.7. This meant that holders have been selling their tokens for profit in the past three months, but the magnitude of profit has declined.

In 2025, the movement of 270,000 dormant Bitcoins signaled a rise in market supply.

The LTH SOPR indicated that investors were willing to sell for profit, despite shrinking margins over the past three months.

Amid this selling pressure, Bitcoin bulls held firm at the $100,000 level. The weekly swing low touched $98,200, but the overall weekly structure remains bullish for now.