Bitcoin Forum

Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin

There are various reasons
Most fall under the category of been unable to access their coins
Either through loss of password or death
While the minority are still holding.
In all I can only speculate since i am not one them.

Why those OG's didnt sold their bitcoin? Case to case basis

If someone do still have access to their coins then its simply;
• They do tend to hold forever whether for Profit reason or for its utility or showing the support
• Target price hadnt met yet
• They dont need money yet?  :)

For those dormant accounts or doesnt have any activity since.

• Lost keys?
• Dead owner
• Totally forgotten that they have Bitcoin

If i were you, then it would be just that better if you dont mind much about those non touched coins or wallets.
We dont know on what happened into their respective owners. One things for sure though that if the time comes that they would
be having access or getting in touch with their coins then its neither they would be selling off for profits likely.

Some people decide to hold it until they meet the price they want. Some may lose their private keys. Or maybe some of them cannot find the private keys anymore. Imagine where satoshi is now. He also has a lot of Bitcoin that did not moved for a long time now.

Someone has to prove that it's transactional, and we can buy things with this. Just imagine we are all buying Bitcoin, and no one is spending, and it has no use in reality. So, what is the point of gathering more and more Bitcoin and no plan to spend it? Some people see Lazslo as an Idiot because he sold 10000 Bitcoin for two large-size pizzas.

What if I mined or bought 1000 bitcoin and they are in 5 addresses and on 5 different wallets. Assuming 800 bitcoin is in 4 addresses and wallet and I sold it and it remains just 200 bitcoin on one addresses or wallet. People can say I have not sold bitcoin before because my last wallet has not sold bitcoin but that does not mean that I myself have not sold bitcoin before. You can not link all the owners of bitcoin to all their addresses and wallets.

Maybe others are in need of the money because they want to spend it for their dreams and others have already reached their goals so they don't need to sell their bitcoins rather they just want to help the crypto market by holding some of their bitcoins. These are only a few reasons that I think this is all happening despite the fact that bitcoins have already reached its world-record price in 2021. I wonder if we will see some more old holders who will gonna sell their bitcoins when another ATH is recorded after 2024 bitcoin halvings.

Apologies to be blunt, but I believe the answer falls something along the lines of:  "None of your business".

When it's your money, you can wonder about what to do with it.  If it's not yours, then what the owner is or isn't doing with it is of no concern to you.

They sold their bitcoins earlier because they did not believe Bitcoin can make price like $100, $1000, $10000 or $60000.

They did not touch their bitcoins because they have yet wanted to touch those coins for selling, taking profit. They did not touch their bitcoins because they lost access to their bitcoins by losing private keys, losing devices on which they stored bitcoins and they did not have any usable backups.

How many bitcoins lost?

The Estimated Number of Bitcoins that Have Been Lost (https://originstamp.com/blog/how-many-bitcoins-have-been-lost/)
Lost Bitcoin: 3.7 million Bitcoin are probably gone forever (https://decrypt.co/37171/lost-bitcoin-3-7-million-bitcoin-are-probably-gone-forever)

You can make your own estimation with HODL wave and UTXO ages.
https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/hodl-waves/

They lost money but you get donation with a condition that you have bitcoins.

hoarding since 2012

my reasons:
dont need the lump money yet(think retirement fund)
i support bitcoin
i see bitcoin has longevity so no need to "get out early"

that said i do take very small % of holdings out for my yearly living expenses. but thats small fry.
if i was to take the hoard. there are tax implications so for now i just enjoy my life, travel the world and when i want to settle in a place of better climate(tax haven) and do my own thing. then ill think about selling it all.. but no time soon. there are decades to go in my bitcoin life

The reason may be various. Some might have forgotten that they have bought the coins. Hence the coins are still intact in those addresses. While there might be cases that many owners have bought the Bitcoins earlier, but might have lost access to the wallet or in short lost the password. This is the primary reason for which you seeing the Bitcoins are lying like that from many years. You can consider these Bitcoins as lost ones also.

The major reason that comes to my mind whenever I think of this topic is “lost” it could be that the owner of those bitcoin has lost their private keys and as a result they are unable to access their bitcoin or some of them have lost their life and as sad as it may sound it could be the reason.

They have been articles where some people realised that they were involved in something that has now become relevant and will be able to fetch them a huge sum of money if they go back and retrieve theirs but unfortunately for them they’re not able to remember where or how they kept it and that’s what most likely happened to some bitcoin that have been in a wallet since they were sent there when it had no value and now that it has value they are not able to access it.

That’s just my personal guess, but as others have mentioned it could be that they are just keeping it there for the right time and are hoping it gets to a certain target before they finally move it out and sell.

well i’d guess some are still holding their coins until now and has yet to reap the rewards

you’d think how much will be the amount of value they have already profited and yet they still want to keep going

another possible scenario is if the owners lost their private keys that would have been so misfortunate to think about since it’s just gaining profit without their owners having access to it due to bitcoin’s structure it would be totally impossible to guess those lost private keys or wallets

Lol, I think you have dealt with people like franky so much that you forget to snap out of your defensive mode. What if OP is just a curious teenager wondering  and trying to learn?

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@OP, the answer is : because they are gold hoarding dragons, and they love the sound of coins when they dive into the pools of coins.😉

Bitcoin addresses are like transparent vaults, everybody can see them, if all the bank accounts in the world were the same, you could see the same for millions of people not touching their money, gold etc.

They may be aiming for more profit. It's possible that the early investors are not selling their Bitcoin even if the price is high because they have plans on using their investment for their retirement or they have their own plans for their own future or for their family.

Yeah, you said pretty much everything that needs to be said.


...but one reason why OG's are not hoarding Bitcoin and not selling it is for making a profit. Each halving was an opportunity to sell the stash and secure a nice fortune for themselves - not saying there are no OGs who are like this but it is highly unlikely that this not what most of them are doing. On the contrary, this sounds like more like something the newcomers would do.

They may wait more. If you wait 10 years to sell Bitcoin, it is wise to wait one year or a year and a half and sell it for three times the current price or more. The question would be logical if we said why they did not sell at the peak of $69,000 two years ago, and it will be repeated with every ATH. variables such as the country, age, and financial situation are all considered variables that directly affect investment decisions.

They are holding for so many reasons that me be personal to them, as we all know, bitcoin investment is a profitable thing to do and holding it over time will help in making this happen, though most of them never know this that bitcoin would have reached this far in market price, they only hodl to have an asset that could help them fall back to in the future, we can also make our own personal decision on bitcoin Investment to buy now and hold for the future to come for our own era of opportunities with bitcoin when we hodl.

"Why you create a post after two months and two weeks of your registration date?" obviously you have a reason, while I can only guessing about your reason.

The current Bitcoin price which is $37K might be low for them, as Bitcoin not yet achieved mass adoption, so what's the point to cash out when there's an opportunity to earn more in the future?

Because they're in it for the long haul. We believe Bitcoin's got serious growth potential down the road, kind of like digital gold. Some see it as a hedge against inflation or are just tech enthusiasts excited about blockchain's possibilities. Plus, there's the whole limited supply thing where theres only 21 million Bitcoins to go around and it is creating a scarcity that could drive up prices. Its the HODLers that are keeping their Bitcoin where it is.

You have to realize that someone who started early doesn't only have one address (or a bunch of addresses they used in early days), they can have a lot of addresses and a lot of coins that they acquired over the years in those different addresses. For example someone could have acquired 50BTC in 2010, 20 in 2012, 5 in 2017, and 1 in 2020.
If they wanted to sell 1 bitcoin, they don't have to spend the 50BTC they got in 2010, they can sell the 1BTC they got in 2020.

That's what I do anyway. I don't have nearly as much as the examples I gave and I was only around since 2014 but if I want to sell some coins I sell the newest coins I have "acquired" (could be bought or earned for work or as profit). That way the coins I have form early days and the ones in my cold storage remain intact.

What? Since 2012?  I am glad to hear from an old-timer who still has access to his Bitcoin hodling. This means you have overcome many temptations to sell. You have been able to overcome countless FUDs caused by many events. How were you able to cope when there were various predictions of the death of Bitcoin? Keeping Bitcoin for 11 years is bravery to me because it takes uncommon faith and patience. It takes financial planning and prudence to live within your means to avoid selling your investment. It beats my imagination how people believed in a strange coin and kept holding it even when they had various opportunities to sell and make some profit. I just feel that people who are still keeping their coin visualized or saw what others didn't.

Those Satoshi’s bitcoin doesn’t seems like something that he lost, he might have actually just created a new wallet and throw those bitcoins there and then throw the keys away just to maybe add value to the circulating ones as he as he did say himself what lost coins are for. Or probably he is dead and no one knows the whereabout of the keys. Those could be the cases but for him to have mistakenly lost them I don’t think someone (if he is human) like him is too knowledgeable for that


If we look at the Lazslo cases it is because many people are just seeing it now as him been wasteful because of how expensive bitcoin is now, I bet before the mining of bitcoin even ends some of the next generation might even finds us stupid too for how we spent ours too.


Another reason for why bitcoins on some addresses are still yet to be moved could be maybe some people actually deliberately Time locked it or mistakenly set time that is far too long.


He could have reasons, maybe wasn’t ready to embark on this forum journey yet, or was still looking into one or two in the forum. But his first post isn’t actually bad as we normally have from newbies

Someone has already told you some reasonable reasons in the second post after yours ^[1] - so it already represents the general opinion about your question. I agree with him although several other reasons are also worth knowing, especially because you are still curious as a beginner.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5474885.msg63195078#msg63195078

Bitcoin will remain on the blockchain regardless of whether you still hold or store your private key or not. Losing your private key will make you lose access to your wallet and the consequence is that you will lose your bitcoin forever.

Then from that - you don't have to buy a lot of bitcoin if you don't have a big budget. Buy as much as you have because basically you can still buy bitcoin even if you only have $5 in your account. Start from a small budget and increase it periodically according to your budget capabilities rather than nothing at all. IMO - This is the best way to start.

While most of them do not have access to their wallet anymore because they don’t remember where they stored their private key/mnemonic phrase,  some of the others have already withdrawn and even possibly used it (to solve life problems). There are still that set of people who have proper access to their wallet but do not want to sell it yet (they probably haven’t had need for it or would just rather hodl than have all that huge money as fiat). Additionally, from time to time, these wallets wake up, I guess it’s safe to say that it’s the owner who finally has the access. I hope eventually all the investor of back then find their private key/mnemonic phrase because they deserve it.

This might seem like the first answer that will come to mind; it is natural to imagine what will be the concern of the OP if the early participants sell or not but if you view it from another angle, the OP might have raised this thread to find out some of their motivations for holding that long so that others will learn and also follow same. If this be the case, a lot of new Bitcoin investors will appreciate the long term perspective of Bitcoin rather than seeing it as a quick profit venture.

look at this block of 50 coins

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/3

it is block 3 of all time

went to this address

1FvzCLoTPGANNjWoUo6jUGuAG3wg1w4YjR

worth over 1 million dollars and is untouched.

now 3,4,5,6,7,8 all untouched

but 9. lets look at this one.

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/9

went to this address

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/BTC/12cbQLTFMXRnSzktFkuoG3eHoMeFtpTu3S

now this address has a block of 50 coins plus 145 other coins put into it.

total of 195 in and 177 sent with 18 hanging out.

So if this was and is one satoshi's addresses on this one alone has plenty of action and is old as fuck.

There is no need to be surprised by what happened because bitcoin holders from the start may still want to hold bitcoin until a certain time. We also don't know what the real reason is why they haven't sold their bitcoins.
Or it could be that many of them have forgotten that they still have large amounts of bitcoin so they haven't touched their bitcoin.
You are still lucky that you can still buy it at the current price. When the price of bitcoin reaches a very high price, you may complain and cry because you have missed this good opportunity now.
You can buy it at the current price using the DCA method because it is a good method for everyone who wants to invest in bitcoin.

So many reasons, death or loss of private key, you name it, why would anyone get rich with Bitcoin and never tough their bags for multiple years, it's either they lost access to the wallet or they are already too rich to worry about the money, some big bitcoin whales still operates their wallets and they have been holding for so long.

Like I used to say, it's easier for the rich to keep get richer every day because they have a lot of money to take risks, they have no reason to bow to any panic, their cups are all full of everything they wanted already, mind you not all old Bitcoin holders are rich, some already sold to solve life problems and difficulties.

I just learned from the whales, that long term holding gets you richer than making few profits and taking them out, it's a good play too and nothing is wrong with it, but long term holders are the real people that benefits the most out of Bitcoin.

Just as the majority of people here have given death and lost of access to the wallet holding these coins to be the reason why those coins haven't been move for a long while, another concrete reason for me why I think there coins haven't been sold or touch for this long period of time, is maybe the owners of these coins have not got need for it yet, that is maybe they have a target amount they intend to hold Bitcoin before selling.  Just as in the case of "frank1" above who says he has been holding his coin since 2012, of which this method can also be applicable to anyone, you don't need to hold a whole full 1 Bitcoin, any fraction of it is likely okay, only if you could have the mindset to hold it for a very long time.

Many of the early Bitcoin holders have held Bitcoin and many have failed to hold it. No one could have predicted that Bitcoin would become so expensive. Many have lost their access. I have heard of cases of people who didn't appreciate Bitcoin but eventually lost their access when they realized its value. However, those who have started accepting Bitcoin since 2017 relatively have tried to hold Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is own asset of each investor, he also sells according to convenience when its value increases. Many investors sell bitcoins at a small profit and many hold it for a long time thinking of getting more profit from it.

There are several factors that make Bitcoin holders at the beginning not sell the Bitcoin they have until now, such as they already have a lot of money or they forgot the password and key phrase from the personal Bitcoin wallet they have. just look at how Michael Saylor and several people who are famous for their abundant wealth have not yet sold the bitcoins they own, they know that the price of bitcoin in the future will be higher than the current price, in fact bitcoin is really profited by people who don't sell bitcoin what they have, it keeps the price of bitcoin stuck at a certain level.

We can speculate about their reasons for not doing so, but their reasons do not really concerns us and are theirs alone, however if you want to speculate why this happens we could imagine many reasons about why this is the case, like their coins being lost or not remembering they have those coins at all, after all would you remember where you placed a dollar more than a decade ago? Also it is possible their holdings are so valuable they have in fact sold a fraction of them while the rest appear to not move, but the owners of those coins are just waiting for the right moment to sell some of it again.

but the point is of the first 100,000 blocks with 5 million coins in them over 500,000 coins have moved.

So most of the guys alive  in years 1 and 2 of mining moved what they needed to move.

One day maybe in 2059 old unmoved addresses will be forfeiting the coins unless they move them.

Much Like a bank declares bank accounts to be abandoned.

I wonder if the USA or a few big ass countries will start to do that. Force the stale addresses to show they are not lost or abandoned.

I wish I was only 30 and not 66 as I likely won't live till 2059 to see what they do.

+1

I'm not an OG by any means, but I was up over x60k on my investment in the 2021 bull market and barely sold anything, so I can understand why someone who was up even more decided not to do it.
I know OP might be more interested about people who held bitcoin when it was worth $1, but I know that if we went to $100k somewhere next year, I'd still hold bitcoin.

OP probably comes from a family where owning $100k is a big thing, but not all of us do. Many people live in houses worth 10 or more bitcoin (at current price) and drive cars worth a few coins as well.
The safety that owning an independent asset like bitcoin gives you might be more important to them than some more fiat money in the bank.  

Those are the real long term hodlers who have a clear plan in place about when they would like to cash out because it's not easy to hodl Bitcoin for such a long term as a human being we would be tempted to sell of when it hits peak and starts to drop. Either they had even more Bitcoin and they would have segregated certain amount of Bitcoin which they would be hodling for long term and used some for current expenditure or any other needs.

Some would have purchased at really cheap price and would be hodling a portion of it so there are many reasons but most accurate would be that they are more smarter than is and more successful than us.

There cannot be anyone who is able to provide logical reasons for this and all we can do is speculate on what the reasons might be. Given the large number of Bitcoins that remain stagnant in old addresses, the two most logical reasons are:
- The owner of the address no longer has access to the private keys for that address, and this is a very likely hypothesis. That is, the person lost those keys or he died before using that Bitcoin and no one was able to do so after him.
- Unpredictable personal reasons. The most important of which is that the person has enough savings and does not need to exchange that old Bitcoin.

Not all of them are still holding it because they're holding. Like what has been said that it's likely that most of those are lost forever and the owners of it have lost access on it because it seems unimportant on the early days until they realize that the value has moved up tremendously that they are no longer confident of just allowing it to be forgotten. Remember the guy that has lost his hard drive on a landfill and trying to recover it and as well as the guy that has forgotten his password and has a few attempts left? See. It's because that doesn't look important before but this day, it seems that there's a need for them to see the whole point of holding it.

And out of good luck and faith, the value of Bitcoin have eventually went up that they can no longer to resist it. If I am one of the early adopters like I've bought it on $50, I'd definitely sell them for $100 - $200. And that's the situation of the most of them on the early days and those that has diamond hands are the real OGs that have managed to sold some and hold most still to this date.

most "death" talk is just price mania.. not fundamental technology failure.. if im not wanting to sell i have no need to care about the price whims of that period. price becomes meaningless to me.. its like people dont worry about tidal waves or tsunami's if they are not going near a beach

i do sell small % to cover my yearly costs. and although i do plan and am frugal. i do travel and enjoy life so its not like im torturing myself to "live within my means"

early years for me 2012-2014 i was a day trader.. not looking to exit for fiat profit, but instead to accumulate coin. i did not see the price as a $ figure
i seen it as a % ↑ ↓ of last trade i measured it in +/- sats.
i didnt care what the price was. it was just a mindset of: 'is order B a better accumulation than order A exposure'

if the price was $6-$12 in 2012  or was $250-$500 another year i just seen it as 2x on both occasions. the monetary amount didnt bother me. it was about % and multipliers and sat amounts

then i took a back seat away from day trading thus didnt need to look at price drama on a daily rate

i do however notice the cycle events of ATH-> corrections...
so i do put some to sell on the high. and buy more on the correction
and when i do have spare fiat i do accumulate more on the correction.

Simple , they have nothing to lose as they have broken even and gotten some profits from their investments!!!

Why would someone that bought Bitcoin @$10 or $500 really be pressured into selling when the investment has over a 100% ROI ???

Besides I think the earliest hodlers understood bitcoin better and their beliefs in BTC is out of this world! ** mic drop**

Op might wonder why there are too many untouched Bitcoins on different old addresses, it's given an earlier post answer, it could be the real owner can't access it or is stuck there because they are dead.  I don't think there's a real long-term holder now, it might be a few of them, but the majority will sell Bitcoin in a short period of time when they see a small profit.

Sounds great, but I wanted to know how many times you transferred your Bitcoin to a different address.

Even if we do not consider it as a lost coin, these coins are not in circulation. There are other possibilities too. He might let it remain in his wallet because he is a wealthy guy and does not need to spend his coins. Instead, he lets its users see how valuable it is today. Since people believe he has 1M Bitcoin, if they start to move, people will understand that Satoshi has almost 5% of the total supply.

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't have spent the ETH that I received a couple of years ago as salary from a crypto project. I was getting 1 ETH every two weeks and I spent them instantly. It was around $125 back then.

Aside from reason given in top comment, I'd say due to price increase, if you are into BTC since it was few cents, then $1 price is lot, if you somehow kept holding till then, then you will surely sell it for $10, if not at that then for sure at $100 — you could go on like that.

Our minds are conditioned, and even few x is huge return if you were to compare it to traditional stock market or bank returns back then and still is to people who are not into crypto.  

It is because many people in the past believed in the potential of the bitcoin and many predictions scattered around at that time, so maybe many investors or holders decided to believe in bitcoin, and if it is, then they are not wrong, but why still many hold their bitcoin and remain? Maybe because some of that bitcoin is locked, meaning its owner forgot their access in the wallet and never retrieved their bitcoin, like, for example, those quite known people who lost their bitcoins, like the one that lost its hard drive, and many more cases, so maybe that's why.

But one thing is sure: many people believe in bitcoin and believe that it could go higher. Even if the amount they hold is tempting, with self-discipline and a futuristic mindset, they will choose to hold their bitcoin. Of course, it is impossible for some people to sell some of their bitcoin as they have their own needs.

Absolutely, that's their business. But I think today's generation should also give props to those who supported and owned BTC from the start when it was dirt cheap. Because anything is possible from anywhere, and what I'm thinking is that the current status of Bitcoin owes a lot to those who still embraced it when it wasn't known by many. It's a level where someone supported it without necessarily expecting huge profits from Bitcoin, quite different from our mindset nowadays.

Interestingly, when those old wallets wake up, the market gets a bit shaken. No one knows about those old wallets, whether they can still be accessed or if they've lost their owners.

It's like a kind of Bitcoin graveyard on an address that can't be accessed anymore.
The Bitcoin is motionless and cannot be opened by anyone.
The initial holder must have sold his holdings and if any of them are able to withstand until now, of course he is very great and not tempted by the millions of dollars he can make.

Like Davinci Jeremie, a software developer from Chile who was an early Bitcoin holder who bought Bitcoin in 2011-2013 and still cost $1 at that time.
He can make $10m in just 10 years holding Bitcoin.
But some people also can't hold back too long and sell it at a very cheap price.

You are right, when we look at those who still hold large amounts of Bitcoin and don't sell it I think they have lost access to their wallet and don't have a way to fix it and maybe there are some who have a lot of assets so they don't sell the assets they have and that's for sure we don't know for sure why someone does what they want.

When someone believes they can get real profits from holding Bitcoin, of course they will not easily sell it, even though they have a very urgent need, of course they will look for other ways to solve it and still keep their Bitcoin.

It's never too late to invest in bitcoin, man. Everything is still very early and there are still many opportunities for us. Furthermore, the financial market has many ways to make money, not everyone who invests early will definitely get rich. Many people who invested early still lost money and only a few became rich. What matters in this market is your knowledge, your knowledge and experience will determine the amount of money you will earn. It doesn't matter how early or late you get in, what matters is how long you stay in the market because the reward usually goes to the last person to stay.

I think everyone had their reasons. Remembering myself in 2009 or 2010, I was also offered to pay for my work in Bitcoin, but I refused. I think it’s because I didn’t know the full value of Bitcoin, which could turn into large sums in the future. What would I do if I had no choice and had to get paid in Bitcoin? I would certainly exchange it for another currency, since the parts that make up Bitcoin scare me. But someone could probably receive the payment and simply forget about it. We often see stories where people start bringing up old documents in search of seed phrases that were created a long time ago. There were probably people who saw much further than us ordinary people, and it is they who are now skimming the cream off their early investments, which turned out to be very successful.

Because not everyone realized the true potential of Bitcoin and the upcoming era of cryptocurrencies in financial world. Many people thought that bitcoin was a temporary thing, like they were thinking about computer in 90s and 2000s. Those, who saw that bitcoin went from some cents to ten dollars, thought it was the best time to make money from nothing and sold them immediately but there were people who knew that it was just the beginning and bitcoin would capture financial world. Yes, some waited and made millions of dollars from it, retired earlier but we can't deny that there are some people who wrote history by selling bitcoin for a few bucks and one of them is a man who bought pizza in exchange of 10000 bitcoins.

There could be a few reasons, and usually they are not good reasons: maybe they lost their private keys, maybe they simply forgot the bitcoins they mined/purchased a long time ago in an old hard disk that they thrown away. It's not nice to say because probably we're talking about relatively young people but they could have died. I find difficult to believe that otherwise someone wouldn't touch his bitcoins for such a long time, not even to moving them to a new wallet or address?

I believe it's because most of them lost access to their bitcoin wallets. Honestly, if someone still has access to their bitcoin wallet, I don't believe it's possible for someone in the last 15 years to not once sell their bitcoin for a dream profit. People who buy bitcoins for less than $1 or $0.01, they have millions of percent profits, which is a crazy profit that even rich people would covet, let alone ordinary people like us. So, other than them losing access to their wallets, I really don't think there's any other reasonable reason.

The owner may have forgotten about their Bitcoin investments or lost the private key that holds many Bitcoins. Some are diamond hands that still hold Bitcoin until a specific price point.

To the early participants of Bitcoin who held on to their investment even when the price was high, good luck. I hope they can sell it for their desired price and safely secure their profits.

Stop dreaming and start living in reality, Satoshi has invented something powerful and has disappeared or gone underground to be able to craft newer upgrades and strategies to maintain his innovation and to make it remain competitive and relevant, he's not coming any day to create a new bitcoin or give you some bitcoin. The bitcoin he created is the only original cryptocurrency in the world and he wouldn't reduce himself to the point of creating another shitcoin to compete with Bitcoin cos that will be madness. The early guys have ran their race and keep reaping the fruits of their labour, that doesn't mean that the entire opportunity is gone, No. You have to start from where you are to build your wealth and run your race. quit being jealous of the early holders, they had their own challenges back then before investing in BTC and they are successful enough now. Take charge of your own life, work hard and smart around your finances so you can accumulate good quantity, enjoy and be celebrated in the nearest future instead of wishing that Satoshi appears and gives you free BTC to better your life. Bro, nothing comes for free in this life, you've to work for them and with consistency and dedication, you will excel Just like Satoshi and the early investors.

not revealing all details but i have 3 allocations of funds
one i call my hoard.. many addresses of 85% of total. which has not really moved in atleast 9 years
(funds have been added to it within that time but not moved out) -  this is my retirement fund style of investing
(that said i did use small amounts to buy asics in 2013 era. but not noteworthy)

one i call the cycle wallet.. many addresses of about 10% of total. which moves a couple times per 4 year cycle
funds in and out over the years, accumulating and when over 10% i move into hoard -  this is the tidal wave investment
ATH -> correction shorting

one i call my 'dont care, play money' many addresses. 3-5% can move daily or quarterly. its another accumulator and what i would dip into for yearly expenses and if accumulating after expenses id put into my hoard

The answers you seek has been already answered but I still think that most people who aquare bitcoin on early stage has no idea what they have in there wallet probably no boody has told them about bitcoin after they might have kept it in there wallet. Some lost the device which was use to aquare the bitcoin and if you Lost your mobile phone which was used to store your bitcoin probably you have lost access to it.
Many people who received there bitcoin never knew the word " Not your key not your coin" they never knew private key was a root access to their bitcoin. Many are Dead just like others have already said.

some have sold some fractions of it, and still awaiting the ATH, or sees it as not a necessity to sell now since others are accumulating.

OP, you should be aware that in the crypto space, once you lose access to your crypto wallet, you cannot possibly get back access to your wallet, and the reason why some people have Bitcoin early investors might still have their coin in the old wallet is probably because they can't access the wallet again; maybe they have lost their private key or wallet phrase. Some people, too, are holding intentionally because they have targets that they want to sell, probably when Bitcoin has gotten to $500k.

Many had lost their keys and another reason is they invested long back without knowing what it is, and now they don't remember what they had invested. This seems to be the prime reason according to me. The person who had bought bitcoin knowing its ability have been holding it for the right price to be reached, so that they can use it and make themselves one among the richest with bitcoin.

That's good to hear a Bitcoin hoarder like you can able to hold that long, it might you've a rich family didn't you?
9 years it seems I'm afraid of losing my credentials to access my Bitcoin and it might be you're using a hardware wallet or an air-gapped wallet to store all your Bitcoin.  How can you manage to keep your private key safe until now?  Are those non-custodial wallets pretty common those days back in 9 years?

Thank you for hearing your story, Frank.
I understand now the reason why you keep participating in the forum even without wearing signature ads for paid.

Well, some of them must be, but that isn't the only reason why the coins in all the early addresses haven't moved. Most of them must have abandoned their wallets and lost access to them because they didn't expect Bitcoin to become this much popular, and some might have passed away while holding and the remaining ones are the ones who are still holding their coins till the date and didn't even sell when the price touched $69k in 2021.

We can't know if he is still alive or not because no one has ever known him and there has never been any updates about him and his whereabouts. However, even if he shows up, he doesn't need to create or generate new Bitcoins just to make the existing coins lose value which wouldn't make sense because the supply is enough. There are other issues that he can deal with like the scalability and high transaction fees from time to time.

Because they don't have the private keys. Bitcoin 0.1, Bitcoin 0.2, Bitcoin 0.3 did not have any export private key or backup wallet option, only generate and send coins. They just participated in an experiment, a testing phase.

https://i.ibb.co/qFM2yxp/4.jpg

I’d say when looking at the blockchain a lot of early participants haven’t sold their coins because they likely lost the information to be able to access their coins. You hear about it all the time on the news. Then there’s the people who got into Bitcoin for the tech and not the money, and those folks often need their BTC for projects they may be working on.

If that's true ? Then 4.5 million coins have not moved  :o

I don't think there's that much uncirculated bitcoins ?

there are many reasons why they don't sell their bitcoins, the most common reason is that they lose their phase .  they think btc is worthless so they forget it  and they realize when btc is as valuable as it is now and they forget where to save their seeds
one thing is impossible if BTC owners never sell their BTC especially since they have already made a 1000x profit from when BTC was first introduced.

 Well, for those who have been hodling for a decade might have been living a very good life these days after they have sell their bitcoin and enjoy their massive profits. While for those who are only hodling a little amount and still hesitant to sell most probably they want to maximize their bitcoin accumulation, then they will definitely continue to hold onto their bitcoin.

However, for those who have been hodling bitcoin without performing with caution, their seed phrases or their wallet keys might have been forgotten and that until now they are still in the process of recovering their wallet keys especially that bitcoin price has become too expensive compared to the time they bought it first. And lastly, others might have prioritized altcoins over bitcoin, and they chose to neglect the potentials of bitcoin because they are too busy collecting altcoins.

I hope the person you mean is not Satoshi Nakamoto, because he will never touch the Bitcoin in his wallet ever. Different cases may happen to the people you mean, many events that were never expected before can make them no longer able to touch their Bitcoins. Common cases occur due to loss of access to open the wallet and death of the original owner.
If the wallet with Bitcoin stored in it can no longer be accessed by anyone, then the circulation of Bitcoin will decrease. It is necessary to educate traders or investors who are just starting to invest in Bitcoin to always protect or store their private keys in a safe place, because if they lose access to open their wallet, their assets will be frozen forever in that wallet.

There can be many explanations for very old untouched crypto wallets. The easiest explanation is probably that the investors don't really need the money and believe in the long term growth of Bitcoin. The bitcoin price had a good recovery in the last few weeks and some people could be interested in taking profits now. But if you have been around since the beginning of crypto currencies, you have seen the bitcoin price close to 70,000 USD. When you didn't sell at the ATH, why should you be selling today? Also with the halving coming up next year it makes a lot of sense to wait longer before selling. Another explanation why the coins in these wallets are untouched could be that the investor lost access to them, or the investor died in the worse case and nobody from the family knows about it. There are quite a few stories about people losing their keys and all their bitcoin.

Not everyone are in the side of selling their bitcoin or have that passion of selling their holding due to either wanting to take profit by selling their total holdings while there are other who are sole traders and they sells whenever they noticed every little changes in the market and would want to utilize every given opportunities to increase their profitability. Those wallet with thousand of bitcoin in them that hasn't made a transaction for long time could be as a result of misplacement of keys hardware wallet, lot of people faces this challenges because of war or flood victims especially fire incident can likely cause wallet to be entirely dead and not being active.

Well, we are all speculating but I believe that we can't have another bitcoin out of this bitcoin we already had and again Satoshi won't come revealing themselves. Who knows if they are company or groups of persons that comes together to create bitcoin, so in my opinion we can have only central bitcoin though any other coin can be created but not as exactly as Bitcoin because bitcoin has already taken the place as the number one currency that can never be beaten by another coin out there.

You didn't missed anything single moment, you can still buy bitcoin hold as little as you can, maybe who knows what tomorrow would give birth to?
Tomorrow's we can find Bitcoin worth a half million or almost a million and the fraction you managed to accumulate today will worths hundred of thousands tomorrow, so take the bold step and start your bitcoin journey.

Most the time people forget their password so their tokens remains saved in wallet forever so they cannot use it neither for profit nor for uses. BUT their is also another reason for this like some people have set a goal due to which they are unable to sell their coins before they reaching to that price. There are different reasons but it will depends on a person's mind that why he is not using his saved coins. In my opinion people often want to wait for four years of duration and sell their coins only at the time of Bull market. Some people are too rich that they don't require selling of their coins so that's why they wants to hold bitcoin for years.

Even though it might look like the earlier participants have sold their Bitcoin which I don't think so, we should learn the habit of holding and not selling just for little profits. We can make good profits from the market if we learn to hold for a long time.
There is better profits in holding and those that have the mentality of selling after the market had moved slowly from a particular price to another price within a small price difference, we should not know that we are not a good holder and profits will be less.

I think many of them didn’t backup their private key and have lost access to their wallet. People were careless with wallet security back then, the value of bitcoin was not high so it wasn’t really a big deal to lose sleep over. Once in a while, we see a dormant address suddenly become active and moves coins out the wallet. Another reason would be death, the owner of the wallet may have died and did not make provisions for his family to inherit the bitcoins.

just think of what early holders felt when btc was just very cheap. of course, they won't think of holding it for years and years as they didn't know yet that this will become big in the future. so at that time, they would sell their stash if there's value in the market. i don't think everyone was already thinking that this currency has bright future. this is why the story of buying papa john's pizza for 10k btc was very famous. if hanyecz knew that btc will be worth thousands of dollars, do you really think he will spend it on buying pizza?

Cause the market's looking promising. We got the halving at the cusp of happening next year, some serious uptrends in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with no real signs of ever slowing down, and a pretty thriving crypto industry that's continuously expanding. So it just makes sense for newbies and older participants in this industry to not sell their cryptocurrencies this early.

Although if you're talking about bitcoin's earliest adopters, beats me really. For the most part some of them have ludicrous amounts of bitcoin that they can't just cash out on a whim or it would cause panic buy on everyone below the ladder. So they time their buys, slow their transaction processes, and make moves that don't startle the market so as to not risk devaluing their cryptocurrencies.

There's a crypto market that's getting better and better every day. The vast majority of people have positive expectations for the future and I think that number is growing every day. When you look at what Bitcoin has been through and what it's accomplished, not selling is the right move.

What the early adopters and Bitcoin holders have accomplished is tremendous. It must be great to buy Bitcoin in anticipation and watch all the phases that Bitcoin has gone through over the years.

I disagree as anyone owning BTC has a vested interest in those coins.

One) they could be consider abandoned and confiscated.
Two) If we wake up tomorrow and 1,000,00 are liquidated over night btc would crash like mad.
Three) everyone needs to realize the power those 1,000,000 plus coins 50 in 20,000 blocks or so wield over btc in general.

If someone would have had the 20,000 private keys to the 20,000 addresses. They would have spent the coins, by now.

The earliest participants did not generate coins to become millionaires. They just participated in an experiment.

experimental software > https://i.ibb.co/qWGSFVd/exprimental.jpg

At some time in the future, the private keys corresponding to the addresses will be found and the coins will be spent.

Do you care about that? There are many reasons behind it and you never know the truth, so it's none of your business.

You could say this is the right reason.
We heard some news from them losing bitcoins because they lost their initial phrases, passwords, dead people that are mentioned does make sense but indeed we all just speculate on their bitcoins at the beginning not moving maybe because of the above reasons mentioned.

Has there been prof that none of those firstly investors that invested in the Bitcoin since when it was introduced and was rated at $0 rate and $.01?
I think they must have sold atleast a fraction out of their Bitcoin ever since then.
Although there could be every of its possibilities but by OPs nature of thread it sounds like there is a proof to argue about it.
However, if I can literally or otherwise convinced that there are certain of such earlier investors who hasn't sold any of their Bitcoins since it was established til date then such must be financially stabled investors who likely are not financially bothered and has diverses of investments and doesn't see their Bitcoin incomes generations as one of the means to solving their financial problems instead they want to keep accumulating more and more. Maybe they likely want to see the elastic volatility end of Bitcoin.

Such investors could be the  inspirational point of contacts whom the investors of today is deriven its courages to hodl for a long-term goal of investment despites how tempted they could be to seel out their coins in both solving their financial problems and the depreciations of Bitcoin even after appreciated values.

Hodling bitcoin for 5 to 10 years is not easy as it is. Those who have succeeded hodling this long might have very deep faith on bitcoin, and luckily their fiat funds are stable and sufficient enough that they won't even think and get tempted to sell even a portion of bitcoin. While others have still faith on bitcoin but due to emergency events that rise all of sudden, no matter how much they want to prolong hodling, they have no choice but to forcely sell their coins early.

Bitcoin gets even more valuable and highly expensive every year. That's why some have chose to hold for their future retirement, while some bitcoin have no trace of transactions probably because the owner has forgotten it or has definitely lost his seed phrase while its still worthless at the time he first purchased it.

Can't imagine the regret those people have, especially if they have a significant amount of Bitcoins back then. Even if they didn't have, they can always buy more. Those dormant address who suddenly came to life might be from the lucky and knowledgeable pioneer hodlers. It is also possible that some where recovered, and some are from the hacker. They think the public will get tired of tracking them if they keep silent for a long time.

A lot of Bitcoin are lost and out of the circulation because the owner have died. This is why it's important to not be selfish and find a trusted person that we can share our private keys or seed phrases with.

Of course there are many reasons why people who used to buy Bitcoin don't sell it until now, even during the bull run they don't sell it, according to what I know, as follows.

1. The reason people don't sell their Bitcoins until now even when the Bitcoin price rises is because they know the potential of BTC in the future but they only have a small amount of BTC for example 5 Bitcoins or 3 BTC because in my opinion people who have a lot of BTC have mostly sold it. even though only half was sold. but for those who have a few BTC people see a lot of potential in the future and see a small supply of BTC, but they are rich people and have a large income in the real world, so they don't sell it because they want a bigger profit in the future.

2. because don't know how expensive BTC prices are and  are busy with work in the real world.

3. because of losing the keys or because of death, and the one I hear most often is because of losing the keys.

Some might regret and some might not, cause Bitcoin is still part of crypto where volatility exists so people wouldn't still predict or expect the outcome of Bitcoin's market. Unless you are one of the people who are holding literally huge amounts of Bitcoin and use it for silly things like the example of the guy who used thousands of BTC just to buy a pizza, big regrets indeed. Plus people might be too busy to remember to access their wallet as they might have thrown the hard wallet and the fact that from years people might also forget the passwords and seedphrase.

I strongly believe that Bitcoin early birds were very smart enough to get hold of the system smartly. Most of the dormant wallet you see holding Bitcoin for years are just alternate wallets by those who were opportuned to get hold of Bitcoin and they decided to hodle some of their wallet for a very long time while they merry with other wallets holding some worth portion of Bitcoin to sustain themselves.

However, some might be as a misplaced key phrase which the owner has long lost access to or death of the owners as already mentioned by other members here.

If I have the opportunity to be among the OGs that had opportunity to have bitcoin in the golden days of bitcoin, I will probably hold some and sell some of them. The reason for selling is to cater for my current financial level because I can't millions in bitcoin without selling some for myself. I will leave the rest to see how the future goes because selling all your bitcoin without having any in your care is like becoming slave to the tradition financial market.

The oldest people are still holding because they are rich already with some they sold back in the days and they are leaving very fine. Most of them like their privacy, so they don't show to the world ttey have this bitcoin to their private keys. Just imagine selling everything at todays price and then next year after the halving bitcoin rose to $100k, that's like 3 times the current price of bitcoin. So why sell your bitcoin when you don't even need the money right now? That's the common sense why I think they are still holding.

The earliest participants of Bitcoin often referred to as "Bitcoin whales," may have various reasons for not selling their coins. They might believe in the long term potential of Bitcoin and expect its value to increase further.
Selling a large amount of Bitcoin could potentially cause a significant price drop negatively impacting their own holdings. Some may also view Bitcoin as a store of value or a hedge against traditional financial systems & therefore choose to hold onto their coins. They may have personal reasons such as sentimental value or a desire to support the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Hell, they could even have been so early that they lost access to their coins or got rugged by Gox or similar.

I imagine that people who have a lot of bitcoins seem to live their lives freely without any other entanglements, preferring to live a quiet and private life. On the other hand, maybe most Bitcoin wallets have been inactive for a long time, maybe people have died or lost their private keys.

Even if the person who did that regrets his decision now after so many years as the price have hugely appreciated, I wouldn't call that purchase to be silly or stupid because it was the demand of the time and he has become one of the earliest people to use Bitcoin to purchase something in the real world at a time when only a few people knew about Bitcoin and its existence, and I believe that's an achievement in itself and it's the only reason why he is so popular and everyone knows the story. I bet no one would know the guy if it wasn't for that crazy purchase using Bitcoins.

Based on this theory, anyone who uses Bitcoin to buy something or even convert them to cash right now will be making a silly move according to the people in the future when Bitcoin will be worth maybe 100 times more than what it is right now, but that's a wrong mindset because we tend to pay for things with assets based on their value in the present and we don't think about what their value might become in the future.

The volatility and unpredictability of the cryptocurrency market may dissuade early participants from selling their Bitcoin. They may fear selling at the wrong time and missing out on potential future gains. Some early Bitcoin adopters may also have ethical or ideological reasons for holding onto their Bitcoin, such as a belief in decentralization and the potential to disrupt traditional financial systems. Furthermore, some early participants may simply not need to sell their Bitcoin at the moment, either because they have sufficient financial stability or because they have other investment strategies in place. It's also possible that early participants are waiting for specific price points or milestones before considering selling their Bitcoin. Ultimately, the decision not to sell Bitcoin for early participants may be influenced by a combination of technical, logistical, personal, and strategic factors. Each individual's situation and motivations will vary, leading to a diverse range of reasons for holding onto their Bitcoin.

possible that they have various reason why they really want to hold their coins for a very long time. It's a case to case basis. There are some kind of investors who have set a proper timeline before they sell their investments, as long as they have enough money and savings for their daily needs, they don't have to move their investments unless there's a crucial reason to use it.

I read something here in forum before that one of the reasons why they haven't sell their hodling is because it's been so long, that they can't remember where their wallet IDs are, just like what you've mentioned, some of them misplaced their key phrase and Other reason is about technical issues just like Lost device and computer system issues.

It is true that most of the wallet holders might have had one issue or the other that warranted them to ignore the wallets holding their Bitcoin assets. However, that does not mean that.the issue of wallet key phrase is the only problem they are facing but rather some might be as a result of their holding for a long time so as to accumulate huge amount of profit on the long run.while some are another issue.
But in all, there must be one reason or the other that warranted wallets of that nature to be inactive irrespective of the   number of years the wallet has stayed.