Tracked by on-chain analytics company Glassnode, the latest data reveals that less than 12% of the current Bitcoin supply is held in exchange wallets.
Bitcoin has returned to exchanges during the 2023 BTC price surge, where BTC has more than doubled from its low point in the cycle.
The period since late April has witnessed a reversal of the long-term trend of BTC leaving exchanges, and this month, it has reached a significant milestone.
As of July 10th, 11.59% of the available BTC supply is currently held in exchange wallets. This figure is the lowest it has been since mid-December 2017, when Bitcoin reached its all-time high prior to that at $20,000.
Exchanges currently hold a total of 2.252 million BTC as of July 10th.
Joe Burnett, the Chief Analyst at mining company Blockware, has observed that the BTC balance has decreased by over half since the market crash triggered by COVID in March 2020.
“Crypto exchanges are running dry,” he concluded in a recent portion of a commentary on Twitter.
Meanwhile, exchange balances continue to decrease as the number of Bitcoin whale entities, those entities with the largest wallet balances outside of exchanges, increases.
Around 40 new whale entities have emerged since late April, and on July 7th, their numbers reached the highest level since the FTX crisis in November last year.