HODL No More? The Amount of Bitcoin in Active Wallets Is Near a Record High

An increasing amount of bitcoin is being held by active individual users, rather than companies and long-term investors, according to new data from Chainalysis.

Announced Monday, the analytics firm found 4.8 million bitcoin, or roughly 32 percent of the protocol’s cryptocurrency supply (minus lost coins), was held in personal wallets with some level of transactional activity as of August 31. That’s up substantially from the end of 2017 – around the time the market peaked – when just 3.8 million bitcoin, or 26 percent, was in the hands of individuals.

The August numbers were the second-highest for individual accounts on record, and off only slightly from July’s high of 4.95 million bitcoin, or 33 percent of all coins in circulation.

“There are more people who are holding crypto personally,” Chainalysis economist Philip Gradwell told CoinDesk.

As a result, Gradwell said, “there’s a much larger supply that’s liquid. A lot of the people who bought [this year] are buying smaller…