Bitcoin Price News: Two Early Bitcoin Holders Sold $117M BTC, but Whales Are Buying the Dip at Record Pace
Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is trading around $70,500 after a brief rally toward $75,000 that was met with a firm rejection following the Fed decision. Two Bitcoin OGs then made massive moves on March 19, selling a combined $117 million in BTC the day after the Fed held rates and raised its inflation forecast.
On the other side of those sales, whale wallets holding over 1,000 BTC added 8,400 coins in the same 48-hour window. Bitcoin held on exchanges—the supply that’s actually available to trade—has dropped to 2.7 million BTC, which is a level not seen since 2018. In total, large holders have added 270,000 BTC to their wallets over the past 30 days—the most in a single month since 2013.
We dug into who these sellers are, what the whale data actually shows, and what it all means for where the Bitcoin price goes from here.
Who Sold $117M in Bitcoin and Why
An unidentified wallet bought 5,000 BTC roughly 12 years ago at about $332 per coin, which is around $1.66 million total. It sat untouched until November 2024, when the owner started selling near Bitcoin’s highs. Between then and early March 2026, the wallet moved 2,500 BTC at an average price around $96,000. On March 19, another 1,000 BTC went to exchanges with BTC trading near $70,500, bringing the total sold to 3,500 BTC and roughly $330 million in profit on a $1.66 million investment—a staggering 266x return. The wallet still holds about 1,500 BTC, worth around $107 million at today’s Bitcoin price.
The second seller has been linked by Arkham Intelligence to early Bitcoin investor Owen Gunden, though he hasn’t confirmed it. The 650 BTC he sold on March 19 was the last piece of a much larger exit that started in October 2025. Over five months, Gunden has moved roughly 11,650 BTC to Kraken in seven separate batches worth a combined $1.16 billion. All 263 of his tracked wallets now hold less than $1 combined—showing that he’s completely out.
The $117 million the two Bitcoin OGs moved on March 19 sounds like a lot, but it’s roughly 0.5% of Bitcoin’s daily trading volume, which ran about $21 billion that day. Despite the selling, the Bitcoin price held above $70,000 mainly because whales kept buying as the long-term holders sold off their bags.
Why Whales and ETFs Are Buying Bitcoin While OGs Sell
One wallet tracked by Lookonchain has been buying Bitcoin daily since March 10, pulling 2,656 BTC off Binance at an average price of $72,063. Within 48 hours of the Fed decision, wallets holding more than 1,000 BTC added a net 8,400 coins. Zoom out further and the 30-day total from large holders has reached 270,000 BTC, the biggest single-month buying wave in more than 13 years.
The steady buying is pulling Bitcoin off exchanges at a pace not seen in years. Bitcoin reserves on centralized platforms have dropped from 3.2 million BTC in 2024 to roughly 2.7 million. Nearly a million coins have moved into cold storage, ETFs, and corporate treasuries in under three years.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs also posted seven straight days of inflows from March 9 to 17, pulling in a combined $1.17 billion—BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for over half of that. In the same week, Strategy bought 22,337 BTC for $1.57 billion, its largest single-week purchase of 2026, bringing its total holdings to 761,068 BTC. The inflow streak broke on March 18 with a $129 million outflow on Fed day, but the week still ended net positive. Funding rates on Bitcoin futures are also sitting near neutral at +0.002%, which means the buying pressure behind the Bitcoin price right now is coming from real money, not leveraged bets that could unwind overnight.
What Happened the Last Time Bitcoin Hit Extreme Fear
The Fear & Greed Index, which measures crypto sentiment on a 0-to-100 scale, has now spent 46 consecutive days below 25—the extreme fear zone—and is currently at 11. The index hit 8 during the COVID crash in March 2020, 6 during the Terra-Luna collapse in June 2022, and 10 right after FTX went under in November 2022. Earlier this year, it dropped to 5 in February, which was the lowest reading ever recorded.
Bitcoin was trading around $5,000 when the COVID fear reading hit 8, and it rallied roughly 170% within three months. After the Terra-Luna panic at 6, Bitcoin was near $17,600 and climbed 158% over the following year. Across every instance where the index has dropped below 15, Bitcoin has posted positive 30-day returns about 80% of the time.
Bitcoin’s weekly RSI has dropped to 27.48. The RSI is a momentum indicator where anything below 30 signals oversold conditions. The weekly chart has only crossed below that line three times in Bitcoin’s entire history—January 2015 when BTC was around $200, December 2018 when it was near $3,500, and right now. Both of those earlier readings came right before multi-year bull markets that delivered thousands of percent in gains.
The caveat is that these signals tend to play out over months, not days. When the fear index dropped this low in the past, Bitcoin’s average return over the following 90 days was just 2.4%—the bigger gains came later. Investors who bought during those extreme fear windows and held for 12 months are the ones who caught the full recovery.
Where the Bitcoin Price Goes From Here
The OG sales grabbed the headlines, but two wallets cashing in after years of holding isn’t what moves the Bitcoin price long term. The conditions that showed up before every major Bitcoin recovery of the past six years—extreme fear, record whale accumulation, and shrinking exchange supply—are all present right now. Although none of those guarantee a rally, it’s the same setup that preceded the 170% bounce after COVID and the 158% climb after Terra-Luna.
If ETF inflows resume, it would signal that institutional buyers are getting back in. The next FOMC meeting is May 6-7, and Kevin Warsh is expected to replace Powell as Fed chair around that time. His stance on rate cuts will shape whether the second half of 2026 opens up for risk assets or stays range-bound. For now, $70,000 has held as support through three tests, and the on-chain data underneath it looks nothing like a market that’s about to break down.
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