A chart by Glassnode reveals that at this moment about 83% of bitcoin addresses are in profit.
This chart examines BTC held on public addresses and compares the price when they were received with the current one.
From December 2018, until March 2019, this percentage was less than 50%, so with more than half of the addresses in profit.
At that time the price was below $7,000, but by mid-May 2019, the price was back above $7,000, with more than 50% of the addresses in profit.
In June of last year, when the price went over $12,000, the addresses in profit exceeded 80% and remained in positive territory even after the fall in August.
Since then this percentage had always remained above 50%, until the collapse in mid-March 2020, when for a few days it was below this threshold again.
But then the price rose and now this percentage is back above 80%.
This means that 80% of the addresses holding BTC contain bitcoin that was received at a lower price than the current one.
There is no guarantee that the BTC received on an address represent a purchase, as it may have simply been a transfer from one address to another owned by the same person, or it may have been payments for goods, work or services.
However, the fact that this percentage is so much higher than 50% leads to the assumption that most people who have bought bitcoin and still own them are also currently in profit.
In addition, the highest percentage of addresses in profit this year, almost 90%, occurred on June 1st, when the price of bitcoin rose above $10,000.
This suggests that in the event that the price should again exceed $10,000 the vast majority of people who bought bitcoin would be in profit.
The highest percentage after the collapse in early 2018 occurred on June 26th, 2019, when it rose to 95% when the price of BTC exceeded $13,000.
It is worth recalling that, according to Chainalysis, most BTC are owned by people who hold them for a long time, i.e. as a long-term investment, and this partly explains why, whenever the price rises significantly, most addresses go into profit.
Over 60% of all bitcoin in circulation have been held for a long time, while only 19% are traded daily on exchanges.
Obviously, those who bought BTC during the speculative bubble at the end of 2017, when the price reached $20,000, are still at a huge loss, but it is possible that a significant part of them have already sold the bitcoin they bought at that time.
