Bitcoin Whales Cash In as ETF Hype Finally Fades

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On-chain data speaks with the quiet arithmetic of a factory ledger: the long-hold cohort-those who bought before the ETF ceremony-has returned to harvest profits in this latest price rally, as if the numbers themselves were stamping their feet for attention.

2-3 Years Old Bitcoin Holders Have Ramped Up Profit-Taking

In a missive tossed onto X, Glassnode, that sober watchdog of the ledger, points to a fresh pattern: the Realized Profit among the two-to-three-year-old Bitcoin investors manifests in stubborn figures that mock sentiment and flirt with conscience.

The “Realized Profit” here is no carnival game; it is a stubborn indicator that measures the profit realized by holders as they move coins, precisely as its name implies. It is the ledger insisting on truth, even when truth wears a hoodie and says it’s just trading.

The metric wanders through the transaction histories of every token to determine the price at which last movement occurred. If that prior price sits below the latest spot price, the sale is counted as the realization of profit-an exit made with the gravity of a confession.

The exact amount of profit harvested in the move is the difference between those prices, and the Realized Profit sums this value across all such transfers. A counterpart metric, Realized Loss, handles the coins of the opposite fate, as if the market needed a devil’s advocate to keep its books honest.

In the context of our topic, the Realized Profit of a specific slice of the populace matters: the investors who bought their coins 2 to 3 years ago. Below is the chart Glassnode shared, tracing this stubborn indicator’s arc.

As the graph demonstrates, the Realized Profit for this 2-to-3-year cohort spikes as Bitcoin’s price storms past the $80,000 mark, like a stubborn bell tolling the end of naïveté.

This cohort represents buyers who anticipated the US spot ETFs, and those who bought into the early ETF-launch hype, a crowd that learned the hard way that optimism can be a costly education.

While these long-term holders have persisted in the market longer than most pretenders, it would seem some have chosen to use this rally as a convenient exit from the stage.

At the peak of this selloff, the 2-to-3-year investors realized over $209 million in profits per hour, a number that slides down the page with the cold precision of a clock-time and money both undeniable, both indifferent. With a relatively low cost basis, these holders had been sitting on profits ranging from 60% to 100%, as if the market itself were offering a generous discount on a grim investment.

Speaking of long-term investors, perhaps the most notable such entity in the market is Strategy, which has been an aggressive accumulator of the cryptocurrency. This buying spree has continued into 2026 despite the bearish turn of the winds.

As co-founder and chairman Michael Saylor has shared in an X post, the company has increased its Bitcoin holdings by 63,410 BTC in these first months of the year alone, as if the ledger itself rewarded stubbornness with more ink to write itself into history.

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2026-05-06 14:56