In a significant shift in the structure of the bitcoin market, the amount of supply held by “conviction buyers” has risen to nearly 4 million BTC, according to BitGo data cited by Bitfinex on Wednesday.
Bitcoin in the hands of long-term buyers currently represents a 300% increase since the end of 2025, indicating a massive migration of the cryptocurrency’s realized value towards large, low-activity entities, according to Bitfinex.
The huge “conviction” capital is valued at just over $320 billion, based on the current bitcoin price of approximately $80,000.
“While the exact methodology behind BitGo’s ‘conviction buyers’ metric is not immediately clear, the broader signal is notable,” said Mati Greenspan, market analyst and founder of Quantum Economics. “Historically, periods of liquid supply shortages combined with renewed demand have created the conditions for bitcoin’s most aggressive bullish expansions.”
The current accumulation trend marks the largest two-quarter increase in high-conviction purchases since the COVID-19 crisis of 2020, Bitfinex said. Conviction buyers are long-term investors, whether individual or institutional.
Long-term buyers’ holdings are not part of the estimated 5.6 million BTC that have been dormant for more than a decade, according to Jameson Lopp, a core bitcoin developer. The total number of bitcoins in circulation is currently 20.03 million, according to data from CoinDesk.
Bitfinex analysts noted that an increasing portion of bitcoin’s realized value is no longer circulating on crypto exchanges, but is instead passing into the hands of entities that rarely transact, regardless of price volatility.
This structural change suggests that long-term holders, ranging from institutional “whales” to corporate treasuries, are aggressively absorbing the available bitcoin supply, particularly Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin. This company, which currently has $4.6 billion in unrealized profits, recently increased its total holdings to 818,869 BTC, which it acquired for almost $62 billion. When supply reaches these low-activity entities, it effectively reduces the liquid supply available in the open market, creating a potential “supply shock” dynamic.
Supporting this narrative of strengthening the market floor, CEX.IO research. Their analysis reveals that nearly 70% of recent buyers’ supply is now turning a profit, a metric that often serves as a psychological buffer against sell-offs, according to research from CEX.IO.
CEX.IO also suggests that as most new bitcoin investors move into the “green,” their urgency to exit positions during minor pullbacks decreases, helping to stabilize the price of BTC.
“People who really get into bitcoin always want to accumulate as much as possible and never want to sell, particularly now with all the new ways out there to borrow against BTC holdings,” Ran Hammer, vice president of Business Development at Orbs, told CoinDesk. “That completely changes the supply equation, with more BTC structurally removed from the market.”
In a separate email comment to CoinDesk, Connor Howe, CEO and co-founder of Enso, said he believes the long-term BTC scarcity narrative is maturing from theory to market structure.
“As ETF flows and institutional accumulation become more structural than speculative, a greater proportion of supply is moving into conviction hands,” he said, adding that “this could make future shortages much more visible as demand accelerates.”
