Despite the downward pressure on prices, retail traders have increased their holding exponentially in 2022
If there is one bunch of people that would be waiting for the year to come to an end, it would be the crypto investors/traders. Needless to repeat that it has been a very rough one for them. The Santa Claus rally in stocks hasn’t really materialized with full force, as we have seen historically. Having said that, the last two days of trading provided some relief for riskier assets, including cryptocurrencies.
The only hope for crypto bulls left now is if they could end the year on an optimistic note. Looking for a silver lining in the broader gloomy market, data from Glassnode provides an interesting statistic. According to the crypto analytics company, the share of Bitcoin supply owned by retail investors reached an all-time high (ATH) of around 17.3% (chart above).
Glassnode defines retail traders as any wallet controlling less than 10 BTC. The ATH figure is a sharp increase from the last Bitcoin peak (Dec. 2017) and earlier in 2022 — where this percentage stood around 9% and 12% respectively. Other periods of heavy retail accumulation included late 2013 into early 2014. This might not be much of solace for the losing traders, but it does show a 12-year-old asset trending in the right direction.
According to CoinMarketCap, the distribution of bitcoin among various percentiles appears to be more even compared to other top cryptos, such as Ethereum and Dogecoin. While approximately 64% of Dogecoin and 38% of Ethereum is held by addresses with at least 0.1% of the total supply, only 9% of all Bitcoin is held by addresses with a similar proportion of the total supply.
Originally Published on Medium
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