The number of long-term Bitcoin holders is still expanding, but a key gauge of profitability has fallen back below neutral levels, providing a more cautious view of market structure even as older supply continues to disappear from circulation.
In an April 17 market note, on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. said. that Bitcoin’s LTH Realized Supply rose from 5.26 million BTC in January to 8.32 million BTC on April 16, an increase of 3.06 million BTC in three months. At the same time, the LTH SOPR, measured on a seven-day moving average, fell to 0.979 and has now remained below 1.0 for five consecutive days.
Bitcoin data on long-term holders is turning cautious
“The cohort of long-term holders continues to expand,” he says wrote. “This combination matters: the volume of coins in the LTH cohort is growing, but some of the old coins used are already going out at a loss.” In other words, more and more coins are aging to long-term holder status, but some coins issued by that cohort are no longer selling profitably.
The supply side of the equation still looks structurally constructive. Adler said the Bitcoin LTH Realized Supply chart shows “a sharp increase in the volume of coins in the LTH cohort,” rising from 4.16 million BTC to 8.32 million BTC over the past year. He argued that the trend indicates “an expansion of long-term holdings and a compression of liquid supply,” while also noting that some of the increase is due to existing coins simply hitting the 155-day threshold, not just new purchases.
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An increasing LTH Realized Supply range does not automatically imply new demand, but it does indicate that more supply is becoming idle for longer periods. Adler contrasted the current setup with the 2022 bear market, when LTH Realized Supply reached 15.31 million BTC in November before starting to decline as older coins were issued. For now, he said, the current profile is more consistent with a consolidation around $75,000 rather than a broad distribution event.
The warning sign comes from the behavior of the holder at the point of sale. Adler described repeated declines in the LTH SOPR since February below 1.0, a sign that long-term holders who issue coins periodically do so at a loss. The latest reading, 0.979, follows a deeper episode in late March and early April, when the indicator fell to 0.798 and remained below 1.0 for seven consecutive days before briefly recovering between April 5 and April 11.
Adler did not call it a capitulation. “The current picture is a series of recurring shallow troughs below 1.0 with rapid recovery, not a prolonged capitulation,” he wrote. “The key question now is whether the current range will hold above the March lows (0.798) or whether SOPR will break below. A repeat move deeper, combined with a simultaneous reversal of realized supply to the downside, is the real red flag for a regime change.”
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That framework is important because it sets clear conditions for what would turn the current signal of local stress into something more serious. As long as SOPR remains in what Adler described as a shallow loss zone and recovers quickly, the implication is short-term pressure rather than a full bearish reset. In the FAQ section of the note, he said such short dislocations have historically functioned as entry points rather than confirmation of broader downward momentum.
The bearish case, by Adler’s own definition, requires two things to happen together: LTH SOPR remains meaningfully below 1.0 and deepens, while LTH Realized Supply rolls over. That would indicate not only loss realization by old hands, but a broader shift from cohort expansion to active distribution.
For now, Adler’s conclusion ends up somewhere in the middle. The backdrop remains structurally positive as the supply of long-term bonds continues to rise, but the new signal of loss selling means that the market is no longer purely constructive. The next move in the SOPR, especially from the March low, could determine whether this is just another local stress episode or the start of a more meaningful shift in the Bitcoin holding regime.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $77,880.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com