Majority of bitcoin addresses have now lost money

Latest crypto market metrics coincide with a price rebound and could signal a thawing of the crypto winter, analysts suggest

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market saw significant price gains on 26 October, 2022, following months of stagnation and decline (Getty Images/ iStock)

More than half of all bitcoin addresses are in the red for the first time in more than two years, according to the latest data.

Figures from blockchain data firm Glassnode reveal that the number of BTC addresses sending to exchanges is at a 23-month low, with some analysts suggesting that both metrics could signal an end to any more major sell-offs in the short term.

A series of sell-offs over the last year has seen bitcoin’s price drop from a record high of close to $69,000 last November, to below $20,000.

The downturn follows similar price cycles, which have seen bitcoin hit all-time highs roughly every four years before suffering a massive correction.

With bitcoin’s price remaining relatively steady in recent months, there has been a lot of speculation of whether it has reached a bottom. Previous cycle bottoms have seen the percentage of addresses in profit drop to around 40-45 per cent.

When comparing the current price of bitcoin to the price of which coins were when they last moved between addresses, only 49.4 per cent of addresses are in profit, suggesting there could be further losses.

“Bitcoin has been one of the fastest-accelerating asset classes in history: Trading at fractions of a penny 14 years ago, it ran all the way up to to $69,000 last year,” said Dan Ashmore, an analyst at CoinJournal.

“It is against this context of outrageous gains which shows how remarkable it is that most of the bitcoin supply is now loss-making.”

The last time more than half of bitcoin addresses were loss-making was in March 2020, when panic surrounding the emergence of the Covid pandemic caused a market-wide crypto crash.

This has given some investors hope that the price of bitcoin will rebound, potentially even signalling an end to the so-called crypto winter that has seen the overall cryptocurrency market drop from close to $3 trillion last November to below $1 trillion today.

The price of bitcoin has seen a slight surge in recent days, rising nearly 10 per cent to take it to its highest level since mid-September.

Fuad Fatullaev, co-founder and CEO of Web3 ecosystem WeWay said the positive price growth could serve as the basis for a new uptrend.

“[Bitcoin’s] growth is stirred by a number of fundamentals including the UK MP’s vote to recognize bitcoin and crypto as regulated financial instruments,” he told The Independent.

“While it is still relatively early to call the current growth a new rally, we can expect bitcoin to breach the $20,800 level if the buying momentum is maintained before the weekend.”