"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even

[15519028115Q]

Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin

[Ambatman]

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.

[milewilda]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[Learn Bitcoin]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[_act_]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[yazher]

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.

[DooMAD]

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.

[tbct_mt2]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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
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.

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[franky1]

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

[Nrcewker]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[Cantsay]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[btc78]

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

[digaran]

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.

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?
@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.

[LesterD]

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.

[NotATether]

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.

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

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.

...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.

[Yamane_Keto]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[Doan9269]

"Why haven't the earliest participants sold their Bitcoin, and some haven't even touched the coins in their addresses, considering the high price of Bitcoin?"

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.

[Helena Yu]

"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?

[Natsuu]

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.

[pooya87]

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.