Following the U.S. interest rate decisions and rising expectations for a Bitcoin spot ETF, there has been a notable increase in the number of wallets holding Bitcoin over the past ten days. Santiment, a leading crypto analysis firm, shared data on X (formerly Twitter) indicating a 2% increase in total crypto wallet addresses with a non-zero BTC balance, surpassing 910 million in the last two weeks.
Moreover, Santiment’s data shows that the total number of BTC holders has increased by 8% since the market rally began in October, with the count exceeding 50 million. The recent surge in demand for Bitcoin from previously empty wallet addresses suggests a growing early adoption in the market, though Santiment continues to caution investors.
The firm warned that while network growth is a great sign for the long term, the rapid increase in new wallet creation could be indicative of FOMO (fear of missing out) that warrants caution.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $43,750, reflecting a 5% increase from the previous week’s price. Alongside the new demand for Bitcoin, there has been a clear rise in the total number of unique active addresses carrying out BTC transactions in the past week.
Data provided by CryptoQuant showed that the daily active address count for Bitcoin reached 1.23 million on December 22, marking a 10% increase over the last seven days. During this period, the BTC price also climbed back above the $44,000 level, a price point last seen on December 5.
While some traders are taking advantage of the rally to sell their coins, there has been a slight increase in BTC exchange reserves by 0.01%. Currently, crypto exchanges hold 2.02 million BTC, which could indicate readiness for sale. Interestingly, despite the recent price increase and associated crypto distribution, there is a noticeable decrease in volatility within the BTC market. The narrowing of the region between the upper and lower bands of the Bollinger Bands (BB) suggests a reduction in volatility.