450K BTC moved to cold storage in 2022

According to Glassnode data, 450,000 Bitcoin (BTC) kept on an exchange or a hot wallet before 2022 have been relocated to cold storage throughout the course of the year.

Multiple black swan occurrences have occurred in the market during the last year, resulting in around 550,000 BTC leaving exchange reserves. These reserves shrank in large portions on multiple occasions. For example, Binance lost 90,000 BTC in seven days in December, FTX lost 70,000 BTC in two weeks in June, and Coinbase lost 200,000 BTC in four days in November.

The orange line in the graphic below reflects the total amount of BTC held on cryptocurrency exchanges since the start of the year.

The exchanges began the year with just under $2.8 million in BTC and ended with roughly $2.25 million, a decline of about 20%. Current exchange-held BTC reserves amount to less than 12% of total BTC supply.

Self custody

Over a million BTC entered self-custody this year as well. The orange line on the figure below depicts the illiquid BTC supply level, which increases.

The illiquid BTC supply was 14 million in January and more than 15 million in December. This also means that 78% of the circulating BTC supply is kept cold.

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