Unit 2 · Level 2 · Labels & cohorts
Cohorts: old hands vs new money
Slice holders by how long their coins have sat still and two tribes appear. Long-term holders (in Bitcoin analysis, usually coins unmoved for 155+ days) tend to buy fear and sell greed. Short-term holders do the opposite; they're the fast money that panics. 'HODL waves' charts stack these age bands over time, and the tide between the tribes has marked every major cycle top and bottom.
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What you get asked
How does on-chain analysis define a 'long-term holder'?
The chain can't see intentions, only movement, so 'long-term' is defined by dormancy. The ~155-day convention marks where coins statistically stop being traded and start being held.
Historically, what do long-term holders tend to do near cycle BOTTOMS?
In bear depths like late 2022, old hands soaked up what panicking short-term holders sold. Rising long-term-holder supply during a crash is a classic bottoming pattern.
Order the classic cohort cycle, starting from a bear-market bottom
HODL waves make this visible as bands of coin-age expanding and contracting. Supply migrates from patient hands to eager hands and back. That migration IS the cycle.
When a rally goes vertical, the share of supply held by coins younger than 6 months typically ___, because new money is chasing the move.
Young-coin dominance is a crowd-o-meter. When most of the supply just changed hands at high prices, the holder base is nervous and top-heavy.
Why do analysts watch the long-term vs short-term holder split at all?
A market owned by old hands is hard to shake; one owned by last month's buyers is a tinderbox. It's the market's temperament, read from coin ages: a compass, not a calendar. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Carefully turning anonymous addresses into funds, foundations and holder tribes.