As Bitcoin surges past $65,000 for the first time since 2021, here’s what onchain data is telling us about the leading digital asset.

Onchain data can sometimes paint a conflicting picture, with exchanges recording some of the biggest withdrawals in five years, while addresses that only accumulate and never spend bitcoin are seeing record inflows.

More than $2.3 billion worth of bitcoin was withdrawn from crypto exchanges on Friday, according to Glassnode data shared by CryptoSlate analyst James Van Straten. He noted that around $200 million of this amount was routed back into Coinbase Prime, meaning that roughly $2 billion still left trading platforms in a single day.

I don’t think I’ve quite seen anything like this before.

All in all on the Friday, just over $2.3B worth of #Bitcoin left exchanges. One of the biggest withdrawals in over 5 years.

(Roughly $200M of this was sent to Coinbase Prime) so let’s call it $2B.

Binance saw about… https://t.co/QkSumLzDrn pic.twitter.com/XrrXp9vF20

— James Van Straten (@jvs_btc) March 3, 2024

Glassnode data shows that the total amount of bitcoin on the major crypto exchanges it monitors stands at 2,286,347 bitcoin as of March 2, which is the lowest amount since 2018, around the time that bitcoin was trading at $8,000.

Interestingly, a separate set of onchain findings from CryptoQuant analyst Julio Moreno shows that there has been record-high inflows into accumulation addresses, which refers to wallets that only receive bitcoin and never spend it.

Latest on #Bitcoin 🧵:
There’s record high demand as seen in record-high inflows into accumulation addresses (addresses that only receive Bitcoin and never spend). pic.twitter.com/JsFCQJYbhp

— Julio Moreno (@jjcmoreno) March 2, 2024

“However, prices have increased so fast that some indicators start to signal overheating phase. The bitcoin bull-bear market cycle indicator flagged overheated-bull phase (read area) as prices reached $60K,” said Moreno on X. 

At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $63,600, down slightly from a high ahead of $64,000 earlier in the day.

While a market overheating typically means that the price of bitcoin could be in for a correction, another onchain analyst, who goes by the X pseudonym On-Chain College, noted that these periods can last for months, and will likely mean prices can still go higher from here.

I like looking at how much unrealized profit long-term Bitcoin holders are sitting on during bull cycles.

The reason is that the overheated period (blue line) is rounded at the top and can last for months.

If history repeats, we still have months more of higher prices to go pic.twitter.com/i5fFb3e35o

— On-Chain College (@OnChainCollege) March 1, 2024