Bitcoin Exodus Accelerates: Exchange Reserves Plunge Below 15% - Bullish Signal?

Bitcoin's disappearing act from exchanges hits new milestone as available supply dwindles to historic lows.

The great BTC migration

Exchanges are bleeding Bitcoin faster than a hedge fund manager's credibility during a bear market. With less than 15% of circulating supply now sitting on trading platforms, the digital gold rush is entering uncharted territory.

What the numbers reveal

This supply crunch mirrors pre-bull run patterns from previous cycles - except this time institutional players are hoarding like never before. The math is simple: less liquid supply plus growing demand equals... well, you can connect the dots.

As traditional finance scrambles to understand this market (while still charging 2% management fees for the privilege), Bitcoin continues rewriting the rules of asset scarcity.

In brief

• The percentage of Bitcoin available on trading platforms has fallen to 14.5 %, a low since 2018.
• This drop is explained by massive withdrawals to offline wallets, notably by long-term investors and whales.
• BTC reserves of OTC desks linked to mining are at a historically low level, worsening supply tension.
• If this trend continues, Bitcoin’s price could enter a new sustained bullish phase.

A critical threshold crossed : Bitcoin liquidity collapses

While long-term holders reach a record accumulation level, the percentage of the total Bitcoin supply held on exchanges has fallen to 14.5 %, a level unseen since August 2018. This figure, reported by Glassnode, marks a worrying inflection point for market liquidity.

The decrease in reserves available on exchanges coincides with an intensification of withdrawals, often initiated by long-term investors or whales. These transfer their BTC to cold storage wallets, thus reducing the supply available for trading. For Glassnode analysts, this behavior signals a “structural shift towards long-term accumulation”.

Alongside the decrease on exchange platforms, the balances of OTC desks, used for over-the-counter crypto transactions often by institutional investors, are also in free fall.

According to CryptoQuant data, OTC balances linked to mining companies have dropped by 21% since January 2025, reaching a historically low level of 155,472 BTC. This figure is based on flows from “1-hop” wallets identified as connected to mining pools.

This general scarcity is becoming worrying for some sector players. In a message posted on the social network X, Crypto Chiefs summarizes the situation by stating : “Bitcoin available OTC is in free fall. We have never seen such a divergence between available reserves and price!”

The bitcoin balance available OTC is in freefall.

We have never seen such a divergence between balance and price!

You are witnessing a supply problem play out…. pic.twitter.com/r4bK3BdMy1

Here are the main indicators noted :

• 14.5 % of the total BTC supply still available on exchanges, a low since 2018 ;
• Massive withdrawals to offline wallets : a sign of long-term accumulation by whales ;
• -21 % of BTC in OTC addresses linked to mining companies since January ;
• A historical low of 155,472 BTC in reserves on these OTC addresses.

This setup fuels the hypothesis of an imminent imbalance, where demand, still present, could hit a structural shortage of tokens available for sale.

Institutional appetite reignites bullish pressure

Alongside the scarcity of supply, massive capital inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs are a bullish driver difficult to ignore. According to data from SoSoValue, these investment vehicles have registered 15 consecutive days of net inflows, representing more than 4.7 billion dollars injected between June 9 and June 24.

On June 24 alone, ETFs attracted an additional 102 million dollars, confirming a sustained trend. For Lau, founder of the Focusw3b agency, this dynamic is explained by a “strong institutional demand”, combined with an “ever-contracting supply”.

🚨BREAKING: Bitcoin back above 100K

The week starts strong. Institutional demand holds, supply keeps shrinking.
All eyes on the next move. pic.twitter.com/NKitmnMe07

This rise in demand occurs while bitcoin remains above the psychological threshold of $100,000 since May 28, despite a correction of 2.85 % in recent days.

According to data from CoinGlass, a drop below this level would trigger the liquidation of $6.42 billion in long Leveraged positions, increasing short-term volatility. However, analysts believe such a drop is becoming less and less likely in the current context. Several now anticipate a BTC between $140,000 and $200,000 by the end of this year, if the trend is confirmed.

The combination of a massive institutional influx and a plummeting supply could create fertile ground for a major bullish movement. However, the implications of this dynamic go beyond price alone. If retail investors struggle to access BTC amid scarcity, this could accentuate concentration of holdings in the hands of powerful actors. In the long term, such concentration could raise questions about governance, network stability, and resilience.

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