Fidelity Forecasts Epic Bitcoin Supply Crunch—28% Poised to Vanish From Markets
Bitcoin's about to get a whole lot scarcer—and Fidelity's crunching the numbers.
The Supply Squeeze
Nearly a third of Bitcoin's total supply could vanish from active trading markets. That's 28% of all BTC potentially going off-exchange as institutional adoption accelerates and long-term holders refuse to sell.
Market Mechanics Shift
Traditional finance models struggle to price assets that literally disappear from circulation. Wall Street's still trying to short an asset that keeps getting pulled into cold storage—classic move.
The New Digital Gold Standard
Scarcity's driving this market, not quarterly earnings reports. While traditional assets fluctuate based on earnings calls, Bitcoin's playing an entirely different game—one where the rules rewrite themselves every halving cycle.
Scarcity Mindset Replaces Abundance
In 2010, the Bitcoin ecosystem desperately wanted more BTC to be circulated. Some websites even offered five Bitcoins for a single click.
Today, with 1 BTC valued at over $100,000, such efforts are no longer necessary. Fidelity’s research highlights a key trend: the number of unmoving Bitcoins steadily increases, a sharp reversal from a decade ago. Given Bitcoin’s fixed total supply of 21 million, an increase in non-circulating coins raises the likelihood of a price increase.
Fidelity’s report identifies two key groups that contribute to this illiquid supply. These groups include addresses with no recorded movement for seven or more years. They also include publicly traded companies holding at least 1,000 BTC.
This combined group is estimated to hold over 6 million BTC by the end of 2025, representing 28% of the total supply. Fidelity further projects that these holdings could grow to 8.3 million BTC by 2032.
Potential for Profit-Taking
A critical question is whether these long-term holders will begin to take profits. According to Zack Wainwright, a researcher at Fidelity Digital Assets, these two groups held over $628 billion in bitcoin as of June 30, 2025 (for $107,700 per BTC)—more than double the value held just one year prior.
While this represents a massive unrealized gain, Wainwright does not expect it to reverse the illiquid supply trend. He acknowledged, however, that there have been early signs of capitulation, with 80,000 “ancient Bitcoin” (coins that haven’t moved for over a decade) being sold in July 2025.
Wainwright concludes that a shrinking liquid supply will continue, and investors should understand this shift to shape their long-term portfolio strategies.
