tl:dr;
in short. mining costs and cost of acquisition has more of an impact than the 19m coins in circulation being hoarded.
but ultimately its the active day trader actually making the orders that impacts the price the most. because they are the ones setting the price.
the waffle explanation:
the bitcoin exchange market price is not affected by:
- the 19million coins in circulation (hoarded on keys).
- the 1-2mill coins deposited onto exchange hot/cold wallets.
bitcoins price is affected by active and just 'taken' marker orders on the market order book
EG independent cold store hoarders or those using an exchange as a hotwallet custodian, but not buying/selling. do not affect the price. because they are not buying/selling to set the price
as for those with market orders. its not a simple supply/demand.
this is because although in 2012 bitcoin had ~11mill coins in circulation and MTgox had many millions of coin alone
mtgox orderbooks were 10-1000 coin per order.
now in 2022. where there is 19mill coins in circulation(more general supply) market order lines are more like 0.001-1
what you find is that when there is less bunches of dollar. EG people are only offering $43 for 0.001 its not like the sellers are going to 'wall' the market with 10-1000 btc orders that never fill to move the price.
instead the sellers also depreciate how much they put in at any order line by also going down to 0.001 to match the demand
so its not a simple supply demand. its actually several layers of psychology changing whats deemed as supply.demand
..
that said only those making market orders affect the price. no one else
..
to add another aspect to this.
what people think is fair VALUE of a range thats ok to trade between. is more of a less refined and slight speculative range.
for instance in iceland/russia they value bitcoin at $30k because they can mine it for that. america values it at $40k. and japan values it at $70k
so japan think the bitcoin price is undervalued(super cheap) because they cant even mine it for less than $70k
so iceland think the bitcoin price is overvalued(premium) because they CAN even mine it for less
as hashrate and mining costs increase. this impacts the value range people are willing to trade between
in short. mining costs and cost of acquisition has more of an impact than the 19m coins in circulation being hoarded.
but ultimately its the active day trader actually making the orders that impacts the price the most. because they are the ones setting the price.
Like suppose a long term whale hodler decided to sell his bag. This will cause the price to crash, but they usually recover soon. Small hodlers have little to no impact on the price.
well technically they are no longer hoarders..
hoarders dont sell. thats what makes them hoarders