Bitcoin Wallets See Largest Drop Since 2024, Hinting at Market Rebound

Bitcoin (BTC) shed around 245,000 wallet holders in just five days, the fastest rate of wallet exits in nearly two years, according to on-chain analytics firm Santiment.

The last time this happened at a comparable pace, in the summer of 2024, it foreshadowed one of the more notable bull runs in recent memory.

Wallet Exits Pile Up

According to Santiment, the drop was likely tied to retail traders taking profit, and it explained what such wallet exits mean in practice:

“When holders leave, the remaining supply consolidates into the hands of those with the highest conviction. These are participants who have already decided they are not selling at current prices, which means the effective liquid supply available to the market shrinks.”

The analytics firm also referenced a June to July 2024 episode that saw over 964,000 wallets exit across five weeks. Rather than triggering a sustained downturn, that period laid the groundwork for the bull run that followed.

Santiment’s read on the current situation is similar, and its analysts have said that should history repeat, the wallets exiting right now would be handing their positions to “precisely the kind of long-term holders who tend to fuel the next leg up.”

This latest pullback in holders has come when Bitcoin has dropped below the $80,000 level it jumped over at the beginning of the week. Before the dip, it jumped to a multi-month peak near $83,000, but the correction sent it back near $81,000, where it found some support.

BTC Needs to Go Back Above $80K

The sequence described above is important considering that analyst Ali Martinez identified $80,300 as the average cost basis for wallets that bought BTC in the last 155 days.

At the time of writing, the asset was changing hands at about $79,500, down about 2% in the last 24 hours and still almost 37% below its all-time high set in October 2025.

It means, therefore, that the new whales are currently underwater, which may push them to sell just to break even, and according to Martinez, such panic exits could create a wave of selling pressure that could pull prices even lower.