The current circulating Bitcoin supply (2.4M BTC) held in exchange wallets has reduced from 16% at the beginning of the year to 12.9%, latest data from Glassnode shows. Along with the analysis comes its finding that Coinbase (4.9%), Binance (1.6%), Huobi (1.1%) and OKEx (1.1%) remain the top cryptocurrency exchanges that hold the largest amount of Bitcoin.

The data makes no reference to the recent reported outflow of Bitcoin from OKEx after lifting a five-week withdrawal suspension following claims that one of the exchange’s key holders were held by authorities to “assist an investigation”

For Huobi, the Group has indicated in its global weekly operation report that it has emerged the largest exchange by user assets. It says that as of December 4, based on the BitUniverse database, its digital assets scale is reaching to US$7.6 billion including 240,000 BTC, 3.74 million ETH and 660 million USDT to make it “the largest exchange among global exchanges in user assets scale.”

Glassnode’s data continues to support a bullish sentiment for the crypto space particularly with Bitcoin which it notes has seen about 10% of its supply – as against only 2% in 2017 when the top cryptocurrency hit its previous all time high record – moved at a price above $18,000 though many investors value Bitcoin above this level.

While these older coins are being sold as Bitcoin’s price increases to suggest that long-term holders are realizing profits, the firm notes that the trend has historically been extremely bullish as it “may indicate their conviction for further $BTC price appreciation.”

Crypto bullish trend to continue
Aside from Glassnode’s reported price movement and the drop in exchanges’ Bitcoin supply which indicates off-chain use including safekeeping, other developments have emerged to point to a likely continuous bullish trend for the crypto space.

So far, institutional investors have pumped about US$429 million into cryptocurrency funds and products for the week ended Dec. 7, according to this week’s data from digital asset manager CoinShares. This second-highest record pushes the sector’s assets under management to an all-time high of US$15 billion compared to just $2.57 billion at the end of 2019.

Also, unlike gold which has suffered with outflows from investment products of a record US$9.2 billion over the last four weeks, CoinShares notes that Bitcoin saw inflows totalling US$1.4 billion.

Behind Bitcoin is Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which another report by Dune Analytics claimed has seen its budding decentralized finance (DeFi) space witnessed an upsurge in its number of new users.

The analytics firm reports that the DeFi ecosystem now has over a million active Ethereum addresses – a tenfold increase in addresses – compared to a year ago when it had a mere 91,000 unique addresses.

Stablecoins growing rise another factor
The growing interest in stablecoins which has seen leading companies in the private sector like Visa “racing ahead to implement stablecoins as a new fundamental innovation on how money moves around the world” could contribute to the incoming Biden administration being “supportive” of stablecoins and cryptocurrencies in general according to Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire on “Squawk Box”.

This is because it “is an infrastructure change as big as the initial commercial internet and they’re going to be focused on infrastructure changes that make America more competitive…”, he adds as he casts his view on a positive US crypto regulation outlook in coming months – G7 finance ministers and central bankers now strongly support the need to regulate digital currencies according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Allaire thinks rather than CBDCs, the focus over the coming years could be on identifying a meeting point for the industry and central banks.