By Solomon Odunayo
According to Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, roughly 3.72M Bitcoin (BTC) worth $35 Billion is lost and will probably never be recovered.
This was stated by the blockchain analytics firm in a new report. Going by the report, for at least 5 years, 20% of BTC total supply has not moved.
Chainalysis termed this huge number as BTC that is possibly lost forever. This implies that the holders of this huge sum of BTC are no longer in possession of the private keys needed to access the Bitcoin. Considerably, owners may have passed away.
The report reads in part:
“…20% hasn’t moved from its current set of addresses in five years or longer. We consider this lost Bitcoin.”
Chainalysis also labels relatively 11.1 million BTC out of the total supply of Bitcoin, which is approximately 18.6 million BTC, as Bitcoin held for long-term investment.
“Roughly 60% of that Bitcoin is held by entities — either people or businesses — that have never sold more than 25% of Bitcoin they’ve ever received, and have often held on to that Bitcoin for many years, which we label as Bitcoin held for long-term investment.”
The analytics firm furthered by stating that about 19% of the Bitcoin mined, which is relatively 3.5 million BTC is used actively for trading. The report also reveals that about 340,000 crypto traders are trading Bitcoin (BTC) every week.
Obviously, the blockchain analytics firm does not have the capability to identify individual traders, but it’s capable of tracking the amount they transfer from wallets to exchanges and vice versa, enabling the firm to differentiate retail from capital traders or investors.
According to Chainalysis, retail traders are those who deposit less than $10,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to cryptocurrency exchange at once.
Conclusively, the firm suggests that Bitcoin (BTC) possessed by long-term investors could serve as an important source of liquidity. It also states that long-term investors may decide not to sell, except BTC experiences significance price upsurge.