The wave of selling from Bitcoin's earliest holders appears to be running out of steam. According to fresh on-chain data shared by Alex Thorn, Galaxy's head of firmwide research, dormant Bitcoin movement in the second quarter fell to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2022. The decline suggests that long-term holders, often referred to as "OGs," have meaningfully slowed the pace at which they are cashing out after two years of unusually heavy distribution.
Coin days destroyed, a metric that gives greater weight to older coins, showed a similar decline, reinforcing the picture of a market where previously idle supply is staying put rather than being moved to exchanges or over-the-counter desks. Dormant coin movement tracks Bitcoin that has remained untouched for extended periods before being spent again, and analysts monitor the metric because increased activity from long-term holders has historically coincided with periods of profit-taking and heightened selling pressure, while subdued activity can suggest those investors are holding rather than distributing.
Thorn tied the earlier surge in dormant activity to a familiar pattern. He said the earlier spikes were driven by "OGs taking profit," similar to the pattern seen during Bitcoin's 2017 bull market, suggesting long-term holders have slowed selling after elevated distribution in 2024 and 2025.
A Two-Year Selling Marathon Winds Down
The cooldown caps what Galaxy has previously described as one of the most significant redistributions of old coins since the 2017 cycle. Separate Galaxy Research figures cited by CoinDesk earlier showed that more than 470,000 BTC held for over five years, worth $50 billion, changed hands in 2025 alone, the second-largest amount on record. Taken together, 2024 and 2025 saw $104 billion in long-dormant bitcoin spent, accounting for 78% of all 5+ year old BTC ever moved in dollar terms.
That distribution episode included headline-grabbing single events, such as the roughly 80,000 BTC sale executed through Galaxy Digital on behalf of a Satoshi-era investor in July 2025, which the firm called one of the largest notional Bitcoin transactions in crypto history. Other research has since pointed to the same slowdown: analysis attributed to Thorn found that the reactivation rate of Bitcoin's oldest wallets dropped by more than half in 2026 compared with the prior year, with the "Great Distribution" cycle having peaked in late 2025 when coins aged one to two years were moving at a pace of nearly 900,000 BTC per month.
Why the Slowdown Matters
For traders, the dormant-supply metric functions as a proxy for how much latent selling pressure could still hit the market. A sustained drop to levels last seen before the 2023-2025 rally implies that the cohort of holders most likely to sell into strength — those who bought Bitcoin years ago at a fraction of current prices — has largely already done so. That reduces one source of overhang that had periodically weighed on price action even as institutional demand through spot ETFs and corporate treasuries expanded.
The easing comes as Bitcoin's broader market structure has cooled from its October 2025 peak, with the asset trading well below those highs in recent months. Slower movement of dormant coins does not guarantee price stability, since new sellers, including corporate holders under financial pressure, can still emerge. But a reduction in activity from Bitcoin's oldest and largest holders removes one of the more closely watched risk signals that analysts have tracked throughout the past two years.
An Unresolved Wildcard
One complicating factor for the dormant-supply narrative is a legal dispute that could touch millions of untouched coins. A group of plaintiffs filing under the pseudonym "Noah Doe" brought a case in New York Supreme Court earlier this year seeking to assert ownership over an estimated 3.7 to 3.8 million BTC spread across some 39,000 addresses that have never moved, some of which are believed to be linked to Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator. While the case remains at an early stage and its outcome is far from certain, its existence means the market may eventually need to reassess how much of Bitcoin's oldest supply should still be treated as permanently dormant.
For now, though, the signal from Galaxy's data is that the most acute phase of OG selling has passed. Whether that holds through the rest of the year will depend on price action, macro conditions and how much conviction remains among the holders who have stayed on the sidelines through Bitcoin's latest correction.
