Pre-ETF Era Bitcoin Whales Surface To Cash In On $80,000 Rally

On-chain data shows Bitcoin long-term holders who purchased ahead of the ETF launch have returned to harvest profits in the latest price rally.

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

In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has talked about the latest trend in the Realized Profit of the 2 to 3 years old Bitcoin investors. The “Realized Profit” here refers to an indicator that measures, as its name suggests, the total amount of profit that BTC holders are realizing through their transactions.

The metric works by going through the transaction history of each token on the blockchain to determine the price at which it was last involved in a move. If this previous transaction value was less than the latest spot price for any token, then that particular token’s sale is assumed to be leading to the realization of some net profit.

The exact amount of profit harvested in the move is equal to the difference between the two prices. The Realized Profit sums up this value for all transfers of this type. A counterpart metric called the Realized Loss takes care of the coins of the opposite type.

In the context of the current topic, the Realized Profit of only a specific portion of the Bitcoin userbase is of interest: the investors who purchased their coins 2 to 3 years ago. Below is the chart shared by Glassnode that shows the trend in this indicator.

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin Realized Profit witnessed a spike for the 2 to 3 years old investors as the BTC price observed its rally past the $80,000 mark.

This cohort represents the buyers who bought in anticipation of the US spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as the investors who bought into the early ETF launch hype.

While these long-term holders have been around for a while now, it would appear that some of them have decided to use this price rally as a way to exit from the market.

At the peak of this selloff, the 2 to 3 years old investors realized over $209 million in profits per hour. Due to having a relatively low cost basis, these holders had been sitting on a profit ranging between 60% to 100%.

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 in 2026 despite the bearish market shift.

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 few months of the year alone.

BTC Price

Bitcoin has crossed the $81,500 mark following its 3% jump over the past day.