Majority of Bitcoin May Be Lost, Reveals Research

By Swati Kishore

Research and consulting firm, Delphi Digital has revealed in a research report that as much as 50% of Bitcoin has not moved in a year, pointing to the fact that a majority of it may be lost.

As per a tweet from the research firm’s official Twitter account, Delphi Digital also detailed that according to their study, Bitcoin is likely to reach a price bottom in Q1 2019.

As per the analysis that will be the time when selling pressure from long term investors will decline.

Delphi Digital’s research uses BTC’s Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO). The UTXO is a metric which analyses when a Bitcoin was last transacted. Such data were examined by the research firm to determine the transaction of Bitcoin against the trends in prices.

Interestingly, the analysis reported that the amount of BTC which had not been transacted in a year (+1 year UTXO line) had declined in the year 2017. This was when the price of Bitcoin was touching all-time highs.

Clearly, Bitcoin investors had the incentive to sell their crypto at such high prices.

Since Bitcoin’s December 2017 high, its price has swung wildly, eventually, the bear trend took over and resulted in the falling of the prices during 2018. Such a market scenario resulted in most traders saving their Bitcoin to sell at a higher price.

Delphi Digital has reported that as much as 50 per cent of the Bitcoin available in circulation has not been touched for at least 1 year. This trend runs parallelly with the crypto market downturn.

The 5+ year UTXO line has also seen a continuous rise since the year 2014. It means that either the traders are holding Bitcoin for the long term or these untouched Bitcoin have been lost forever. The research reveals that as much as 20% of the total Bitcoin in circulation may have been lost.

It is interesting to note that although the strategy of holding Bitcoin during a downturn and waiting to sell it at higher prices may be a sound one for the crypto traders, however, it diminishes the value of Bitcoin because it is not being used as a store of value or currency.